The Harri Hound Account
by Hazuzu
Summary: In the wake of The Second Wizarding War, many Snatchers were captured and questioned by the Ministry. A specialist in the criminally deranged has been tasked with interviewing Harietta Hound, a young witch who the records say doesn't exist. Secrets unfold as the specialist delves into the vile crime she's linked to, as well as the haunted artifact that purportedly guided her.
1. Chapter 1

"I-I didn't do it."

Mckenzie had heard those words a hundred times before, in the field and in the questioning room. But something about the way the prisoner said it made her want to believe it. She took a sip of her coffee, regarded the cramped walls of the room, and sat down.

"The truth of that is what I'm here to figure out." Mckenzie assured her. Harrietta was slight of build, with narrow features and a mousy disposition, but the report in her office had told a different story. In particular, the fact that it had taken three aurors to bring her down. But no amount of dueling skill would serve her in the depths of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. "My name is Mckenzie Calderwood. As you might have guessed, I'm an Auror." And an expert in the criminally deranged, but she didn't need to know that.

"'M Harrietta. Harrietta Hound." The girl bit her lip, which didn't make her seem any older. She was twenty at most, if Mckenzie was generous. "My friends...I..." Her hands were trembling and she shoved them onto her lap. "You can call me Harri. If you want."

"Certainly." Mckenzie offered her a smile. "You say that you didn't do it. From all we've been able to discover, you are the only suspect. Do you know something that we don't?"

"It was Bobble!" Harri said. "Bobble did it!"

"And who is Bobble?" Mckenzie made a note of the name. There was a transcribing quill tucked behind the window, but she did like to be thorough.

"She was my friend." Harri's eyes drifted to the dark wall beside her. "I helped fix her, she really, really needed it."

"You say you fixed her. Can you elaborate on that?"

"Well, she, I was, she was just a head when I bought her, and then I put her together again." Harri flashed a smile, but it disappeared within a blink.

"...perhaps you'd like to explain how you met Bobble." Mckenzie said. Wading into the depths of someone's mind, especially someone like Harri, tended to mislead even the most established in her field. At least she'd have a timeline, this way."

"Yeah, I, I'll do that." Harri nodded. "I went to visit Borgin and Burke's..."

* * *

It was the first time I'd been able to visit for a while. Mr. Barrowmont didn't trust me to go out on my own, so I had to go with him, or one of my tutors, and they didn't want me to go alone either. They were being paid for it and it would waste their time and I stopped begging them eventually. But I was excited, because it meant I was going to be able to buy things, and I even had an allowance.

It wasn't a real allowance, but I was going to start Snatching soon, and Mr. Barrowmont said he wanted me to get a taste of the rewards. It was dusty inside, like most of the things hadn't even been moved in a long time, and there wasn't much light, either. There was a fireplace, but it might have been made of stone, because it wasn't lit and it wasn't hot. There was a man behind the desk, with tiny glasses and he was bent over, but he stood right up when Mr. Barrowmont walked in.

Mr. Barrowmont always made people see him, even though he was small and thin and he never talked very loud. I think it was because of his robes; they swooped around when he walked, but whenever I asked him, he just smiled and told me to go back to practicing.

"Good evening, Sir Barrowmont!" He put his book to the side, quick-like, and he stood up and bowed and everything.

"Good evening, Borgin." Mr. Barrowmont said, though he barely looked at him. "This young lady will be purchasing something. Best leave her to it."

"Right," Borgin looked at me then. "Of course, Sir. M'lady." And he sat back in his chair like it wasn't comfortable any more.

Mr. Barrowmont just stood by the door, then he gestured for me to browse as I pleased, so I did. There were all kinds of things there. There were slippers that looked like they were made of dragon scales, there was a wand sheathe partly made of a black stone that moved like skin, a big shelf filled with books that I couldn't even read the titles of, and I read a lot of books. There were talismans, too, and this beating heart that was in two parts, but one half was all split up like a puzzle piece.

I looked through a lot of stuff, but I didn't want to keep Mr. Barrowmont waiting for long, so I only went to things that looked interesting, and that's when I saw Bobble for the first time. She was a skull, sat up on a pedestal in the corner, with these kinds of runes all over it, like a crown on the top and reaching over her nose and her mouth. They were carved in, it looked like, and I thought she was beautiful the first time I saw her.

I ran right up to her, but I couldn't touch, I knew that, not until I bought it. I must have been there for a couple of minutes just staring, because Mr. Barrowmont was behind me all of a sudden.

"Inferi skull." Mr. Barrowmont read out. "Ten galleons." And I felt a pit in my stomach, because I knew that I only had eight. He looked at me and I looked at him and it was like I could see clouds in his eyes. I know occlumency and legilimency, and he did use the former, but I don't think he even needed the latter, 'cause he knew what I was thinking.

"You are in an open field. An Auror is approaching on a Nimbus 2001. They intend to attack you. What do you do?"

"I feint and counter the flying charm on the Nimbus!" I answered quick, like I always did with Mr. Barrowmont's tests. "It's the biggest difference in our resources and they'll be expecting a hex."

"You are coming up on a small room. There is a fountain at the center, with two capable combatants guarding the door to the other side. What is your first move?"

"Incendio the water in the fountain. The steam could hurt them, but it'll definitely conceal me and spoil their advantage."

"You are in a large cave. You are to disable a giant."

"Conjunctivitis curse, to blind it."

"It wears goggles."

"Bombarda the ceiling, so rocks hit it."

"It is wearing a very thick helmet."

"Defodio the ground beneath its feet, so it falls in."

Mr. Barrowmont inclined his head, then handed me two extra galleons.

"Thanks, dad!" I blurted out without even thinking about it, then my gut was back to twisting around itself.

"Buy your skull and we will forget that was said," he said, which I was grateful for, because he used to get a lot more angry whenever I slipped up with that. I grabbed the stand the skull was on and walked over to the counter and paid for it right there. Borgin seemed eager to wrap things up, so he didn't even speak, just gave me a bag to carry it in.

Mr. Barrowmont took me home right after that, we apparated, and I had to do it myself because I'd never learn if I didn't. The first few times, I didn't hit the mark, but that time, I did. I was right in my room and I knew he'd be somewhere else. I knew if I listened closely I'd be able to hear him, but I just trusted it and looked for somewhere to put my new ornament.

It wasn't a huge room, but it wasn't small, either. I had a big bed all to myself, with one wall that was nothing but books and a desk for my studies, another that curved out and had mirrors so I could practice my dueling forms, and the rest had dressers and shelves for the rest of my things, plus a door to the bathroom. I wasn't allowed to change it much, but I liked the dark floorboards and the green walls anyway.

Anyway, while I was moving stuff around, I noticed that the bag had opened. I didn't open it and there wasn't anybody else that could have wandered in, but I walked over and there was the skull on my bed. I stared at it for a moment, and then it moved! Its jaw worked, it rolled to the side, and then it was propped upright!

"H-Hello?" I whispered to it. It didn't say anything, and it didn't have eyes for me to see where it was looking, so I had to guess at my questions. "Can you understand me?" I asked, then it wagged its jaw, which just made the rest of the skull move up and come back down. It was nodding at me! My heart was ready to pound right through my chest, and my fingers were shaking, and my head was filled with all kinds of dreams.

"Do you like my room?" I asked it, and it wobbled about a bit, like it was looking all around, and then it nodded again. "Do you like me?" I looked into its eyeholes and it seemed to look back. I was worried for half a moment before it nodded. "Do you want to stay with me? I'll feed...I'll...polish you! Every day! Do you want that?" I asked it, because I'd only had one pet before, and after it died, Mr. Barrowmont had said that any more would be too distracting. But he'd helped me buy the skull himself, so I didn't see any harm in it.

I hugged it as soon as it agreed, smiling like an idiot when I did.

"I'll name you Bobble! It's not just yours, but she's gone now, and...and, you're a girl, aren't you?" I didn't know what skull was meant to look like what, but it agreed to it all the same. "Bobble, then! You're my Bobble!" I giggled and pulled her onto my lap. She was my very first friend.


	2. Chapter 2

"An animated skull, you say. Interesting." Mckenzie took another sip of her coffee and leaned back in her chair. The most troubling part of Harri's tale had to be her relationship with Mr. Harrowmont, how it had been fostered and how she'd been groomed. How much of it was true, she couldn't know, not until further investigations took place. "Do you have a receipt for the purchase of Bobble?"

"No, they didn't give us one. Or me one. I don't know why." Harri frowned at the desk.

"Considering what they sell, I think I can guess." Mckenzie hadn't had to visit the shop when she was a student, but it came up in Auror records almost as often as wands did. "We'll just have to question Borgin about it when we get the chance. You said this was before you started Snatching – so this was in the Spring or Summer of 1997, correct?"

"Yes, yes, that was it. Mr. Barrowmont had me training especially for it."

"Did you know that Mr. Barrowmont was a Death Eater at the time?" Mckenzie asked, as casually as she could.

"I...yes." Harri's fingers were still buried in her lap. "I didn't know it in those words, but he told me that he was part of a group who was going to make Britain better, and that I'd be working for the people who'd help. By catching people that were doing things against the law. It was the law at the time, so it wasn't illegal, so I shouldn't be here!" Her voice rose for just a moment, right at the end, and then she sunk back in her chair. "...sorry..."

"It's quite alright. The complexities of legality under Tom Riddle's government are a headache for everyone." It had taken Mckenzie some time to get used to calling the so-called Dark Lord by his true name, but it was getting easier by the day. "But we're not here for Snatching at the moment. Thus far, you've told me that Bobble was little more than a skull at this point. Which would render her quite immobile."

"I fixed her, remember? I said that."

"That's what I'm curious about. How did you learn to fix her, how did you do it, how did it occur to you…?" She had a hundred more questions, but those would suffice.

"I just got back from my first Snatching..."

* * *

I apparated home right away, like I was told to when we delivered people. It felt weird, because I'd been working with people, but they were nice enough. I think it's because I was young, It made me nervous, but I was happy, too, because we'd won and I wanted to tell Bobble all about my first Snatching.

"There were three of them and three of us!" I told Bobble while I got out of my Snatching clothes. They were comfortable enough, but they were made for dueling, not relaxing, and I needed to clean anyway. "It was just like my training, but none of them were as good as my tutors, but Carma and Rabbit weren't either." I said, and Bobble rolled over on the bed to sit right by me. "I don't think they were as good as me either, but I didn't say that. I think they knew, but maybe that's because Mr. Barrowmont introduced me. I don't know."

"So, they were camping, and it was two men and one woman and they saw us coming first. We'd got by their wards, but Carma messed up, so they knew we were coming and Rabbit had to set up some anti-apparition charms quick, or they'd get away right away! I was at the front and they all had their wands out already, but they were dumb, because they were yelling and trying to cover each other, but I just accio'd their tent. It swallowed them right up!" I told her, and then she started clacking her teeth together. That was how she laughed, I figured out, but I was babbling too much to notice too much.

"Anyway, then one of them used a severing charm to get out, and I thought all of them would, but one was just leaning over his shoulder and trying to stop Rabbit from setting up the anti-apparition. So I had to block that and then two of them were out and Carma distracted them, so I cast a shrinking charm on the tent and that one was wrapped up like a chocolate bar." And Bobble clacked her teeth then, too. She loved my stories.

"Carma was done then, so it was easy after that, and they were panicking anyway. I distracted them and Carma and Rabbit disarmed them and I got to stupefy them right then. It was almost the shortest part, but it was much more interesting than the finding them and the taking them back." I told her, and I was undressed by then, so I went to the bathroom and Bobble didn't want to stop talking to me, so I took her with me. She sunk at first, but then I used a bubble charm for her to sit on and she even let me give her some bubble hair!

I kept telling her about my day, and then we got to talking about where we were going tomorrow, about how we were going to Snatch this whole family of criminals.

"They're hiding in the Scottish Highlands." I told her, while I was washing. "So we've got all day to try to find them, because there are so many places to hide. Carma's the best at tracking, and we've got these signals to communicate while we search, just in case one of us finds them."

It was then that Bobble started looking antsy, and she just looked at the doorway and wobbled where she was. "What's wrong? Bobble? Do you want to get out now?" I asked her, but she just kept looking at the doorway. I didn't want her to get upset, so I got out of the bath as quick as I could and dried myself with a charm and put my robe on. My bath robe, I mean. Then, I scooped her up and stroked her crown and she kept rolling in my hands, but in one direction.

"What? What is it?" I asked, but I figured out quick that she was trying to pull me somewhere, as best she could, because she was a skull. And it was to my bookshelf, so I held her up, and she kept chattering while I moved my arms, and then she got to one of my map books and she leaned into it. So I set her down on the floor and set down the book and I flicked through the pages, because if she wanted something then that was the easiest way to know. She bopped onto my wrist when I got to one and it was in the Scottish Highlands – Glen Coe, actually.

"You think they're there?" I asked her, and I was smiling, because I thought she'd somehow known how to find the family. But then she shook herself on the floor and nudged against my leg, and I still didn't know what she meant, until she rolled onto the map and then I got it. "You want me to take you to Glen Coe, Bobble?" I wanted to ask her what for, but by then I knew she couldn't have answered. She worked her jaw to nod again, anyway.

"I...think I can do that. If we," I had to grown, then. "But I'll be with the Snatchers. But we might have to go to different places, and I might not get to search there." I looked down at her little bone face and I couldn't help but want to help her, if she really wanted to go, which she seemed to. "I...I'll carry you in my bag. And maybe if I leave early, we can go there, and then go Snatching. Or after, before I come home. Mr. Barrowmont won't mind that. It's like walking a dog. Do you think that would work?"

She nodded then, and I smiled wide because I was happy, and she chattered her teeth, so I knew she was, too.


	3. Chapter 3

"Bobble seems to be particularly mobile for a skull." Mckenzie pointed out. "Did she achieve all of this simply by working her jaw?"

"Yeah. Or maybe it was a little bit of magic, too, but I think she'd do a lot more than wobble if she could do magic." Harri shifted in her seat. "Can I have some water? Please?"

"Certainly." Mckenzie took a scrap of parchment out of her robe and placed it on the table. All it took was a quick transfiguration spell to turn it into a cup, soft like the muggles used, and a charm to fill it with crystal clear water. She used the tip of her finger to slide it across the table. "Did anyone else know about your relationship with Bobble at this point, Mr. Barrowmont, Carma, Rabbit, any of your tutors?"

Harri frowned at the cup before picking it up to take a sip.

"No, not, none of them knew, yet. And I wasn't seeing my tutors when I started Snatching. I was good enough to do it so I was good enough to not need more training, Mr. Barrowmont said, but I did still study! You can never learn enough." Harri tapped her fingers along the side of the cup. "Carma and Rabbit were quiet, too, and Mr. Barrowmont didn't see me much when we didn't have dinner. He was busy a lot."

"I see." Mckenzie hummed and looked to her own cup. It was empty and she'd barely begun the interview. "Did it not strike you as odd that Bobble was so autonomous? You seem to be very well learned in magic, according to our records, and your own story. And you had some semblance of an education in the Dark Arts – you must have known that Inferi are typically enslaved and mindless."

"She wasn't! She was smart, and she laughed, and she was my friend!" Harri flexed her fingers, as though grasping for a wand that wasn't there, then sighed "I didn't think about it… Those things were all that mattered."

"Okay." Mckenzie would have to be more careful with her wording, if she wanted to avoid any outbursts. "That's fine. So, you took her to Glen Coe, in your bag?"

"Y-Yeah." Harri bobbed her head. "I wanted to go early, so Carma and Rabbit couldn't track the time from when I left them and when I got home..."

* * *

I had to get some pictures of Glencoe so I could apparate properly, but once I had them, it wasn't that hard. I'd gotten used to apparating pretty early and it barely even made me want to throw up any more.

The wind was biting at me before I could even take in my surroundings. I was a ways out from the village of Glencoe, which was different from Glen Coe, for some reason, but I had a view of the whole ridge. The mountains were the most obvious parts, and they sloped down to the grass all dotted with smaller hills that made the whole place look bumpy.

The wind was so strong that it would have torn off my robes, if I were wearing real ones, but I had to wear a coat and thick pants, for the Snatching later. Lots of muggles like to hike, and we'd seem a lot weirder if we showed up in the mountains with robes on, and obliviating them was too much hassle. That's what Carma had told me.

Anyway, I liked it there. I didn't get to go out and explore on my own a lot, normally just if I had something to do or if I had to duel a monster or practice it in a forest or a beach or over the sea sometimes. It was cold, but I don't mind the cold, and it was fun to be exploring by myself. Not by myself, because Bobble was there, but it was just us two.

And she started rattling in my bag as soon as we were there, so I took off the flap on top and she was staring up at me. She took up most of it, wrapped up warm like a baby. I don't know if she liked the fresh air or not, because, um, she was a skull… But I thought that she wanted to see, but if I went carrying a skull, then even the stupidest muggle would call the Police and cause trouble. So I just held her up in the bag.

"Isn't it lovely here, Bobble?" I asked her, while I turned around to let her take in the view while I did. I felt the bag shifting in my hands. "I think we could come here a lot. Would you like that?" I'd just turned around to look at the biggest mountain, and then she wiggled a lot. "That mountain? Is that what you want to see?" And then she did just one, which was a nod if I knew her. "Okay, me too. We'll get to see the whole ridge from up there."

I knew she knew that, but I was so excited that I had to say it. I let the bag hang at my waist again, so Bobble could see the sky if she wanted to, and then I started to walk towards the mountain. I had to look around a little to find the path, and there weren't any signs or anything. I ended up seeing a muggle house by the road and I didn't know what to do for a moment. It was early enough that they wouldn't be awake, I thought, so I just walked on by as confident as I could. Mr. Barrowmont said that people don't bother you if you look like you know what you're doing.

I didn't really, but I did find a pebble path anyway.

"I wish muggles weren't everywhere." I complained at Bobble while I walked along. The mountain seemed a long way up and I was used to silence, but I didn't want Bobble to be bored. "They just… Are! And they take up so much space! Mr. Barrowmont says that if they weren't in the way, then we'd be able to do real magic wherever we went and it wouldn't even matter. We could walk around and I could see the whole world. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Bobble? Coming to see the world with me?"

Bobble couldn't not properly in the bag, but she wobbled a bit and that was good enough.

"And I'd have real parents." I went on, as I walked on. The path was getting harder already. I wasn't worried about losing my breath, stamina is very important in dueling, that's what Ms. Vanderhoff taught me. But it was steep, and getting loomier by the step. "Stupid Muggles wouldn't have hurt them. Mr. Barrowmont says that real parents don't matter much… But I don't know if that's right or not. He's been kind, and he gives me nice things and tutors, but… He's not my parent, either."

I knew that much, because he'd told me he wasn't.

"Do you think I should try to find out more, Bobble?" I peered into the pack and she wobbled again. I couldn't help but give her a big smile. "Then we can do that! We can find out together. We can find out your parents, too, if you want!" The joy was so much I felt like I could burst, and then Bobble clacked her teeth, so I laughed too, and it bounced off the mountain and filled up all of the air.

We kept talking while I made my way up. It didn't seem like I was getting higher, no matter how many steps I took or turns I went around, and all I could hear was the ground under my feet and the wind brushing up against me. When I looked down, I could see everything else getting further away, but I couldn't see any people. If it weren't for Bobble, I'd have felt like I was completely alone up there, and I didn't even have a bed to curl up in to shut it out.

And then there wasn't even much of a path any more, just rocks and clouds and the cold that was getting to me even though I was fully dressed.

"Are we high enough, Bobble?" I asked her, because I wanted her to go where she needed, but my legs were getting sore and I didn't really like it up so high. She rolled from side to side in the bag, which my fingers might as well have frozen to, but I didn't begrudge her it. I just had to top myself up with a hot-air charm and keep pressing on.

By the time I could see the peak, I didn't even know how much time had passed, but I hoped I had plenty to get to the other Snatchers on time and get what Bobble wanted. There wasn't anything but a tree further up, right on the peak, and it was still. I could feel the wind trying to throw me right off, but the tree was sat there like it wasn't even being touched. I'd never felt jealous of a tree before then, and I made a bet with myself that it was where Bobble wanted to go.

I had to scramble up the last of it, dig my fingers right into the stones and hoist myself up, and the air was already making it harder to breathe. I covered up Bobble, just so she wouldn't roll out and down the mountain, and kept crawling up, inch by inch, until I couldn't feel my fingers or my toes and barely my own lungs.

And then I was at the peak, and all m feeling returned to me. I grinned at myself, and opened my bag to see Bobble grinning back. She can't help it, because she's a skull, but still, I thought she was pleased. I carried her right over to that tree, and I realized I hadn't seen one like it before. I never learned wandlore, so maybe it was special, but it was tall, reddy-brown, and had a bunch of leaves sitting on the top.

Anyway, Bobble nudged herself against it, which I took to mean I was meant to do something.

"Shall I climb it, Bobble?" I asked, and she shook from side to side. "Put you on it?" Again, she shook. "Um, a spell?" And then she nodded and I took out my wand, but I had to switch holding her to my left hand to do it. "Okay...engorgio?" Shake. "Diffendo?" Shake. "Incendio?" Another shake and I'd have been stuck there all day! "Is it a hex?" She shook. "A Charm?" She shook. "Transfiguration?" And then she tried to roll around in my hand. I had to stare at her for a moment, then I got it. "Reverse transfiguration!" And then she clacked her teeth together.

Now, I didn't know what to change it back into, but I knew that she wanted it, so I thought of her when I cast the spell, and right before my eyes, the whole tree changed! Its leaves were sucked up into it, the branches and the body got smaller and smaller and soon the whole tree was shriveled to be as big as me. Then it started to turn white, smoother, and the branches crossed over in a weird shape, and the bark twisted into a bunch of odd shapes.

And then it was done, and it was a chest! A ribcage, a spine, all of that! It toppled over when it was done, and Bobble rolled out of my hand, and then she stuck herself on the end of the neck and then she could look around with it!

"Bobble! You have a chest!" I told her, though she knew it. She couldn't move much, but she was laughing, and wiggling her shoulder-blades, and nodding with her new neck, and I couldn't have been more happy. She looked pretty just as a skull, but then she had a body to go with it! Some of a body, anyway. "You...you knew this was here..." I gasped as I knelt down beside her. "Do you know where the rest of you is?" And she was nodding, because she could do that properly then.

"We should find the rest of you!" I blurted out. "You can have arms and legs, and we can dress you up, and you can write messages to me, so we can talk properly! Would you like that, Bobble? Would you?" And she kept nodding, and I was so happy I almost forgot I had to go and meet the rest of the Snatchers. She wouldn't fit into my pack like that, which bothered me for a moment, but then I remembered: I have magic!

All I had to do was put an extension charm on my bag and then I could fit Bobble right in. It took one look at the sun to tell me that I had to go by then, so I closed the case and apparated off to meet the Snatchers. I was already happy about getting to duel properly, and the fact that I could help my friend get her own body made it seem like the start of the best year of my life.


	4. Chapter 4

"An interesting tale." Mckenzie had to stop herself from leaning in. She was interested in the minds of the people she interviewed, she suspected she'd find them a lot more annoying if she wasn't, but it didn't do to let it show. To buy in to their beliefs. "You say that this tree was on the peak of the mountain besides the village of Glencoe?"

"Right at the top." Harri nodded.

"And you claim you climbed to the top of the mountain." Another nod. "Why did you not save yourself the trouble and apparate there?"

"… What?"

"You mentioned that you're skilled at Apparation, and you were able to Apparate to Glen Coe with just a picture. Apparating to the top would be child's play."

"Um." Harri scratched at her cheek. "I didn't think of it. I was too excited about exploring. I think."

"Fair enough." Mckenzie reached into her robe and retrieved a picture, which she placed on the table and slid over to the middle. It depicted a wand suspended in mid-air, where it span slowly for no apparent reason. It was pale, with a spiral hilt and a shaft that slightly tapered to a blunt end. "Is this the wand you used?"

Harri took one look at the page and nodded. "You took it off of me."

"Just making sure." Mckenzie flashed a smile. She knew how defensive people could get over their wands. "Do you remember when you got it?"

"Yeah. I was a lot younger than I am now, I think I was eight." Harri said. "Mr. Barrowmont said I had to learn how to duel with my own wand, and he was going to take me to some wandsmiths to get one. I got that one when we went to America and we met in this woman's house, and that was one of the ones she showed me, and then it was mine. Mr. Barrowmont was very happy with it, and I was, too."

Mckenzie silently thought that most people would have been. The Ministry's wandlore experts had quickly identified the components of the wand as yew, with a thunderbird tail feather core. Naturally, that meant it was crafted by Shikoba Wolfe. Unfortunately, the woman was dead, and they'd have to deal with international processes to be able to investigate the truth of the matter. And she'd have to prove it was worth looking into.

"So. You'd found Bobble a chest and then you were off to Snatching. What happened next?" Mckenzie asked.

"Snatching happened. I didn't like it..."

* * *

Carma and Rabbit were waiting for me, both of them were in cold Muggle clothes, like me, and I wasn't so late that they were suspicious. But they were quiet, like they always were.

"I'll cover here." Carma said, and she showed the two of us – that's me and Rabbit – a map, which she'd put three circles on. "Rabbit, here. And Harrietta here, if it pleases you." She handed us our broomsticks, then – to make the searching go quicker.

"If that's the way it's gotta be, that's the way it's gotta be." Rabbit said. He was always talking like that, like he wasn't happy to be there and like he always had to say what he was thinking. He didn't wait around, just Apparated off with a snap. Then Carma did, then I did. I'd already done a lot of walking, so I was happy to have a broomstick to fly on, and I got to take in more of the nature. I couldn't enjoy all of it, because I had to look for people.

Hours passed before anything happened, and even then, it was Carma letting off her signal. I Apparated there a few seconds before Rabbit did, and he stumbled more than me – I think him being so tall made it harder to Apparate properly. Carma was sat right on the edge of an overhang, by some water, and put her finger to her lips while we got closer.

"Camped." Carma said to us, and we peered over the edge. There was one big tent, the water just lapping at its edge, and there were a few people moving about, plus a pair of little white and tan dogs beside a pile of broomsticks. The man was big and burly, the woman tall and slim, and there were two other people with them, but they were younger. Maybe fifteen and eleven, and they all looked a little disheveled. "I know Crups when I see 'em."

"And what's a Crup mean in the morning?" Rabbit asked. His wand was already out, taking out their wards.

"Dangerous." I said. No duelist could be called a duelist if they didn't know about creatures, too. "Vicious. We have to take them out."

"Tactic?" Carma asked, and I took a moment to think about it.

"Accio brooms, so they can't escape." I was watching the Crups. They were sniffing at some sausages in the man's hand. "I'll animate the tent to attack them, you two be ready to go down if they notice it. You cover me while I kill the Crups – we don't have to catch them and it'll distract the fugitives. We overpower the adults first, and then the kids will be easy." I was pretty happy with it.

Carma and Rabbit seemed to be, too, until the Crups' noses drew their heads to where we were on the overhang, and they started barking. The woman didn't even waste a second before she shot a blasting curse up at us and blew up the ground beneath our feet. I just had time to see the man set up a shield charm and yell "Run!" while we fell with the rest of the stone chunks. But I'd drew my wand then, and I called one of the brooms to me and mounted it just in time.

Carma and Rabbit had the same idea, the three of us soaring out from the hail of stones on three stolen broomsticks. My plan was messed up, and two of the kids were running, and their faces were all twisted up with fear while they were scrambling on the sand. Carma and Rabbit were fending off spells thrown by the adults and I could see the kids running to the last broom, and for a moment I didn't know what to do. I hadn't ever seen people so scared before.

But then the Crups were a lot closer than they had been, even in the air, and I could see the adults had banished them right at us. My instincts took over then, and I swiped my wand right through the air. The Crups kept flying, but their throats were dripping red and they were just dead weight by the time they hit Carma and Rabbit. We were soaring in formation and our plan was in tatters and the kids were climbing onto their broomstick.

"Shield!" Carma growled, and one eye was drawn to the couple on the beach. They were working together, one raising a shield between the time it took for the other to fling a curse, and no amount of weaving in the air was stopping them. But I could see into the man's eyes, and his thoughts were on his kids, just like mine. I could sense so much terror in him, more anxiety than I'd even thought possible, and then the kids kicked off on their broomstick.

I had to do it. It made sense. My gut was telling me and my body knew to do it and so, when Carma flung a curse and the man threw up the shield, I counter-charmed the broomstick. My heart stopped just the same as the man's did when they screamed, and plummeted towards the ground, and they hit it before either of us was ready. But his wand hand stopped listening for just long enough that Rabbit's stupefy hit him right between the eyes, and the other could deflect Carma's, but not mine. They both fell to the floor, the same as their hurt kids, same as their dead dogs.

All three of us flew down to the shore where the parents were stunned to sleep, and the waves were crashing, but all we could hear was the kids crying. I had to look over and I saw them bundled in a heap, some bones broken and some bleeding. They weren't dead, but it didn't settle my stomach any, and I walked over to them while Carma and Rabbit tied up the parents. They were so scared, and so young, and they looked at me like I was Death come for them.

I wasn't. I didn't want to be. But I couldn't hear them sobbing any more, so I stupefied them before they could keep going. I couldn't take my eyes away, but eventually Carma came over. She fixed up their bleeding, so they wouldn't die, and tied them up with their parents. She pulled them together into one straight line and Rabbit called the dog bodies back.

"We can't just let them sit or Muggles will get hold of them and then we'll get a penalty." Rabbit explained, though no one had asked, and then he burned them to ashes. And that's all that was left of the camp, just a tent and some broomsticks and a family that we were just about to take to prison. It wasn't the kind of thrill the last had been, not when I knew what they were feeling.

"Let's go." Rabbit said. "Five per head, plus brought in as a unit makes nine galleons for each of us. I reckon. Not bad for a day's work."


	5. Chapter 5

"So. You claim that you felt some kind of remorse when you were Snatching the children." Mckenzie leaned back in her chair. It wasn't the worst Snatching tale she'd ever heard, not with the likes of Fenrir Greyback roaming around, but it wasn't pleasant, either. She'd have been shaking if she could have seen into their minds, too. But then, that was what Occlumency was for. An Auror necessity, second only to a wand.

"Yeah. It wasn't good. It didn't make me feel good, like the adults did." Harri shifted in her seat and kept her eyes away from Mckenzie's. "With adults it was like I was dueling, and winning, even if they were scared, but the kids weren't like that. There wasn't any challenge, and they were all helpless...like Bobble. Original Bobble."

"What manner of creature was the original Bobble?" Mckenzie silently doubted she would have been a dog, considering Harri's description of the Snatching. She'd always found people to be incredibly fervent in their affection for dogs, so much so that they couldn't even call them a mean name, let alone slit their throats.

Harri chewed on her tongue before she answered.

"She was a Puffskein. She died not long after I got my wand. Mr. Barrowmont said I shouldn't get another one when I was going to be so busy."

That wasn't going to be useful for any kind of investigation, what with how popular Puffskeins were and their relative homogeneity. But at least she knew a little more about Harri, and a head-sized off-white creature wasn't so far off from a skull. It would explain Harri's instant attachment to Bobble, whether she was truly alive or simply a delusion.

"With your dueling and such?" That got a nod. "Understandable. If you felt so much remorse for taking down the children, why did you do it?"

"… They had to be stopped," Harri eventually said. "And my instincts kicked in and that was the way to do it. Take away the flying charm and they can't do anything. Hexes might miss and chasing them might mean all kinds of other, bad things happening. They might have had other camps, or a faster broom, or they'd have two wands to my one, and if one of the other Snatchers joined me, then the parents might wake up and the one left behind would be outnumbered." She shook her head. "It...you have to do it right."

"I see. Did anyone notice your unsettled state? I understand that the other Snatchers were not nearly so worried."

"No, but I had dinner with Mr. Barrowmont that night, so I had to calm down as soon as I got home..."

* * *

Carma and Rabbit were happy to get paid and the person who hands out the money doesn't look at us very much, but I got mine and then they went their way, so I went mine. It was nice to be back in my room, away from the space and the people, just me and Bobble. I got out of my clothes right away; they were all muggle-y and they smelled like the sea and I wanted to push as much of that out of my head as I could.

I let Bobble out of my bag next, which was a lot of effort, because she was so much bigger, and I put her down on my bed. She looked kinda more helpless with a chest and a head but no arms. Compared to when she was just a skull, I mean. I felt bad and I thought that maybe she did too, so I crawled onto the bed with her and cuddled her up close to me. I didn't cry, but I felt like I was going to, and I didn't really know all of why.

"Do you think I was one of them, Bobble?" I asked her softly. Mr. Barrowmont was likely to be in before long, and I didn't want to speak too loudly. "When I was a little girl...and the Muggles hurt my parents...did I look like the kids today?"

She shrugged at that. I might have found it funny, she'd never shrugged before, but I was too upset to laugh.

"I don't know if I can do that again..." I frowned off at nothing. I wanted to frown at my own thoughts, but I couldn't turn my eyes around to manage that. "Or a lot. But it's the law. And they are hurting people. Mr. Barrowmont says so." The looks on them were still in my head, their faces and their bodies and the blood on the sand. "And they're safe now. They have medicine and they'll be tried and it'll all be good and proper. Won't it?"

She shrugged again. It wasn't very helpful, but I knew she would have helped me if she could. She couldn't know everything. But what I knew was that I wasn't going to have an easy rest of the day with everything going on in my head.

"We should get more of your body back, so you can be fixed and we can talk!" I suddenly decided, because it was a more exciting thought than moping around until dinner. I was still happy about getting Bobble her chest, even if I'd forgotten it. "Do you know where the rest of you is? We might be able to do it all in a day if we're quick!" I said, then she chattered her teeth and I laughed. It just seemed right to do it when she did.

But still, she nodded.

"Okay, do you want the map? I can get the map. I'll get the map." I slid off of the bed when Bobble bobbed her head and brought her the book of maps. "I'll show you them and then you can chomp when we get to the right page. Okay?" I was buzzing like all of the worries were gone. They weren't, they were just resting. They were good at that.

I flicked through the pages slowly, because I didn't know how good her eyes were, and I didn't want to miss something helpful. But I was still surprised when she gnashed her teeth together. I jumped and she laughed and I gave her a little poke in the ribs for doing it.

"Loch Morar." I read out. "That looks like it's all water, Bobble. How can..." I frowned, then looked at her, and she nodded. "It's in the water? Why would somebody put your body at the bottom of a Loch?" I thought it was very inappropriate, if she ever wanted it back. "I don't know how to… Oh, I'm going to have to do some studying to get this one." I put the book to the side and went to my shelves. I had a lot of books there, for all kinds of magic.

"Do you think it will be at the bottom?" I turned around and she nodded. She was watching me while I was doing it. I was feeling all anxious about getting to the bottom of a lake. It wasn't something I thought about a lot, and Mr. Barrowmont had never got anyone to teach me how to do anything deep underwater. I knew spells for dueling partially in water, for underwater, and how to get out, but for skirmishes and stuff. Not long searches, and no lake was on a map unless it was a big one.

"We'll have to go early again. Or late." I told Bobble, while I sat on the bed with her and spread all of the books out in front of us. "Mr. Barrowmont will tell me what Snatching we're doing tomorrow and then we can decide. I don't think you'll be able to search with me, but maybe if we take off your skull," She shook her head so much at that I thought it might fall off. "No? You want to keep it on?" She gave one nod that said all it had to. I wouldn't like to lose all of my parts either, not even if I hadn't lost them before.

"Okay, we can make it work. I'll just have to find a way." I spent a couple more minutes looking over the spells, with a little piece of parchment for notes, but there was something still picking at the back of my skull and not letting me forget it. "Hey, Bobble?" Her head swiveled to look at me and I flashed her a smile. "When we're done doing this research for this part, can you help me do it to find things about my parents?"

I didn't even have to wait for her to nod to know she'd agree.


	6. Chapter 6

"I find it interesting that you were so willing to break Mr. Barrowmont's rules for the sake of Bobble," Mckenzie said. "It sounds like you had a particularly strict upbringing under his care, from dueling, to where you stayed, ate, slept…"

"It wasn't breaking the rules. Not really." Harri was fiddling with her fingers again. "I had to go out to Snatch and had to come home when I was done, but that doesn't mean I couldn't do other things."

"Really." Mckenzie couldn't help but smile. "Do you think that was in the spirit of Mr. Barrowmont's rules?"

Harri shrugged.

"I think it's safe to say that we both know it wasn't. So, what was the reason? Did you have a record of breaking Mr. Barrowmont's rules?"

"No! No." Harri shook her head jerkily. "When I was younger, maybe, but then I was a good girl. A good girl. It's just that...Bobble needed my help more than Mr. Barrowmont did. And I was still helping Mr. Barrowmont. So it just made sense to do it like that. It wasn't selfish if I was doing it for my friend."

"I see. So it was only for friendship that you were willing to go against Mr. Barrowmont's wishes?" Mckenzie leaned forward and spoke softly. "Are you certain about that?"

"Well..." Harri glanced away from Mckenzie and leaned in herself. "Mr. Barrowmont was looking tired at the recent dinners. More tired than he ever was before. And he talked about how he was so busy. And I thought...I thought that maybe if I broke the rules a bit, he wouldn't notice. It wasn't like he ever had time outside of dinners or special occasions anyway."

Mckenzie smiled. That much made sense.

"You've mentioned these dinners with Mr. Barrowmont before. How often were they?"

"Not very often. Every few days."

"And what kind of food did you eat?"

"Mr. Barrowmont brought the food. I don't know what kinds it all was, but I think it was mostly British. That was where the recipes for my food came from." Harri looked back down at her fingers. "I had to make my own stuff when I started dueling, too. Mr. Barrowmont made it before that."

"But you did live with Mr. Barrowmont, didn't you?"

"Mr. Barrowmont was very busy." Harri said.

"I see." Mckenzie liked Mr. Barrowmont less and less every time she heard his name. "Well, why don't you tell me what happened with Bobble? I'm sure it will be just as thrilling a tale as the last."

"Okay. So it was the morning..."

* * *

I had an early breakfast and I didn't put many clothes on. It was just underwear and a cloak to go over it all, with some more clothes in my pack, so I'd have something to wear when I met Carma and Rabbit later. I had to tie Bobble down in my pack so that her head could poke out without the rest of her floating in the water or getting lost when I moved around, and then we were set.

Apparating to the loch wasn't as bad as I thought. It was still early, but the sun was shining bright enough that the rocks didn't freeze my toes. I looked all around, just in case anyone was there, but it was just the water and Bobble and me.

I had a plan and I meant to stick to it. The first part was easy – I just had to go up to one of the trees and find a good branch and sever it. A few quick more severs and it looked something like a broom, but mostly just a pointed stick, and then I had to put a flying charm on it. Which I was good at, because I had to know how to do it to countercharm it for dueling.

I took my cloak off then and stuffed it into my spare bag, the one with my clothes in, and took a second to let the sun soak in. I knew I couldn't stay in it for long, 'cause of sunburns, but it was nice to feel it and the breeze and the warmth of the day. I took out one of my rings, then put a quick disillusionment charm on the bag, so nobody would know that I was there. And I made a portkey out of the ring, then slid it on my finger, just in case I panicked and I couldn't focus enough to Apparate.

I stepped up to the edge of the lake, all dark water stretching out between the mountains, and pulled my wand out of its sheathe. I cast a bubble-head charm then, not really a bubble-head charm, but more of a bubble-body one. For diving, 'cause I'd looked up how deep the loch was and I didn't want to just get crushed.

So I was stood there, with my flying stick in one hand, Bobble peeking out of her pack, and a big translucent bubble over me. I dipped my toe into the water and it parted around my shield, just like it was meant to, and I knew that I was going to be grateful for that when I got deeper. I lit my wand up with a little light, and it left a trail as I kept walking in, my lifeline if I needed to go back up.

I kept walking, letting the loch swallow me up, until the water was over my head and I could look down to see the steep drops that were just about to come. I built myself up with a few deep breaths, then hopped forward. The water still acted like water, wrapping all around my and my shield, and it seemed quite content to keep dragging me down.

It didn't take long for the sunlight to start fading, for me to be able to see nothing but the trail of light I was leaving behind and the darkness all around me. Anything could have been out there, but I had to tell myself that I knew what was. It was water and fish and some plants and nothing else. Water is just air for different animals.

I looked down into the nothing and gripped my broomstick. I felt myself being tugged, faster than I could have fallen, down, down, until there wasn't any light but the trail left by my wand, and still I kept going. I saw silvery scales flash, black wormy creatures wiggling past, tendrils of green floating in the water. It was colder, too, so cold I could feel it even through my shield. But I had to hold tight, keep going. It was all for Bobble.

I was ready to fall forever when we stopped. I looked down at Bobble and she looked up at me and I couldn't help laughing. We'd done the hardest part. I was so far under the water that nobody could have found me, and I was looking for something with the same fate. The difference was, somebody knew where Bobble's limb was, and that person was sitting in my bag.

I took one last look at the silver trail i'd left, my lifeline to the surface, and kept my wand steady. I mounted my broomstick and let one foot hang,, just low enough to touch the waterlogged earth and keep me vertical, and started to fly through the water.

Bobble looked around. She'd chatter when she knew, when she saw herself, and all I had to do was get her there. But that gave me time to think, about where we were and what we were doing. My lifeline was the only thing keeping me connected to the above. My charm was the only thing stopping the water from crushing me forever. I was ten thousand feet deep and searching for miles, all for the sake of my friend.

It was the only thing that would have made it worth it, really.

We were being thorough with it, going in a pattern that would cover the whole lake. My light would tell me where we'd been and with every pass, I could see it, and then the next time another, and the next time another. It made the void seem so much nicer, when we had a ribbon to let me know how far I'd gone, and how close escape would be. If I thought about that, instead of the dread, of the unknown all around me, I wouldn't get scared.

When Bobble finally snapped her teeth, I almost jumped right out of my skin. There'd been no sound for so long that I wasn't expecting it, just barely remembered to stop my broomstick. There were fishbones and bigger fishbones and dirt and rubbish and all kinds of things on the floor of the loch. Most of it was half-rotted, broken and decayed, but there was one thing that wasn't.

There was a pristine white bone, against the off-yellow and the muddied others, and it was covered in the same kinds of runes that Bobble was. She was almost rattling in her bag, so eager she was to get to it, and I had to grab a tight hold of the bone to pull it out of the mud. With a few tugs, I had a leg in my hand, and the biggest smile on my face.

"I've got it!" I told Bobble, and she clacked her teeth together. "Not so fast! We have to get to the surface first. I didn't strap you down for nothing!" I told her, but I did stick the leg in along with her, tucked the foot under a strap, so she'd know it wasn't gone. I was happy too, for her, and for the sake of leaving behind the lakebed. I wanted to see real light and her real things and feel the sun on my skin again.

Following the trail back was easy, just like I'd hoped, and my heart leaped along with my body when we broke the surface and got to the shore. I looked around right after, just in case anybody was there, but we were alone still. I destroyed my flying stick, countercharmed my portkey and my light trail, then dried myself off. Bobble was rattling again, but I had to get dressed first. Then I found us a nice place beneath the trees, where the sunlight poked through the canopy.

I took Bobble out carefully, laid her out on the leaves, and ran my fingers along the leg. It was so pretty, just like the rest of her, and I was happy to put it where it ought to have been. It popped into place, and she could move it. She twisted it this way and that, like she could start walking at any moment, and she was laughing as much as I'd ever seen her.

"I'm so happy, Bobble!" I pulled her in for a hug. I wished she'd have had her arm, so she could hug back. "You're halfway whole already!" She nodded with me, then, and I let her spend some time enjoying moving her new leg before I had to pack her away again. She wasn't happy about that, but she couldn't move by herself with just one. "I just hope the next place isn't as creepy..."


	7. Chapter 7

"You went to the bottom of Loch Morar for Bobble's sake." Mckenzie summarized. It was something that took not only a great deal of effort, but skill, as well. If it weren't for the fact that she was interviewing Harri in a law-enforcement capacity, she'd have allowed herself to be impressed.

"That's right." Harri bobbed her head. She was sitting a little easier with every part of the tale she told, although not without fidgeting. Mckenzie still spotted fidgets of her fingers, shifts in her seat, and how her eyes seemed to wander around. She wanted to think it was her own skill in comforting people, but it could just as easily have been latching on to the first person to show interest in her. Just as Bobble supposedly had.

"And you utilized quite a few spells to manage it. Where did you learn the bubble charm?"

"Meetings With Merpeople Unabridged." Harri answered instantly, as if by instinct. "The author wrote down the charms ones he used to live with Merpeeople. I only thought of it late; it wasn't in the usual spellbooks."

"Harold Lovelake." Mckenzie recalled the man. "The most litigious man in the wizarding world. I expect he'd have sued his children, if the Merpeople were classified as Beings." She smirked at her own cleverness.

Harri stared at her.

"Anyway." Mckenzie cleared her throat. "You mentioned creating a portkey. Also illegal, but we can deal with that when we come to it. You're old enough now for the Trace to have stopped working. But, you had to learn your spells when growing up. How did you manage to avoid that?"

"Um," Harri shrugged. "I don't know. Can't you counter it?"

"With certain knowledge, you can, although only particular individuals have the knowledge." Mckenzie noted that particular fact for later. "Back to Bobble, then. You mentioned understanding how to fight monsters, which must include how to fight Inferi. When you purchased Bobble, she was advertised as an Inferi Skull. But that is clearly not the case."

"What do you mean?" Harri frowned.

"Inferi are not capable of thinking for themselves. They are not capable of putting themselves back together. If one wanted to destroy an Inferi, one would burn it, not separate it into several pieces all over Britain. It would also be unnecessary to decorate them with runes, for the purpose they serve." Mckenzie explained. "No matter how one sees it, Bobble was no Inferi."

"I… That doesn't matter." Harri shook her head and hunched her shoulders up. "Bobble was Bobble."

"Very well." Mckenzie laced her fingers together on the table. "What happened next? I believe Bobble agreed to help you discover your heritage."

"Yeah..."

* * *

The Snatching that day was easier than the last, but I was paying more attention to the people than I was the first time. I saw all the little things they did that showed they were scared, even though it was two older men, I could see it. Their heads were filled with worries about where they were gonna go, but I had to take them in. I had to. At least there wasn't any mess, and we got the both of them before they could get away, although Carma was complaining about a slash in her coat.

Turning them in was easy, at least, because we could carry them in a case and then just deliver that to the Ministry. Carma and Rabbit handled all of the talking while I just followed behind them and took in the place. It would be pretty if it weren't for all the people bustling around everywhere, chatting and filling up the space, even though it's big. I think it's because the sounds just echo off of the walls. But the workers gave us a wide berth, so that was something.

We got to the office for turning things in and Carma handed over the case and the warrants and the paperwork and then she got three sacks of coin, one for each of us. As soon as Rabbit got his, he hooked it on his belt and he was off. Carma went with me to the exit to the Ministry, although she didn't say much, and then she Apparated away. I was about to do it, too, when I heard Bobble make a snapping noise in my pack.

I hurried into a corner so I could look inside and see what she wanted. She was nudging her head back at the Ministry.

"I have to go in?" I asked her, and she nodded. "We'll… We can't, you can't tell me where to go if we're in there. I'll have to keep looking and that won't work." I tried to tell her that, but she kept tilting her head. "Fine, okay, we'll go in, but I did say!" So I went back in and she was nudging in the bag again. I had to try to walk to avoid people, and I couldn't just talk to her but I could feel her, at least.

I was in front of a map of the building, and then she snapped again and I had to lift up the flap a little to be able to see her. She was tilting her head back and she snapped her teeth again. I frowned, not knowing what to do, and so she wobbled her head, then looked again. I followed her eyeholes with my fingertip, going straight from them to the map, and saw what she meant. The Ministry of Magic Archives.

It wasn't too hard to find the way there, though I had to take a rickety elevator that had me stuffed in with some other people and little flying paper things. I kept my hands to myself and kept to my corner and then I could get off, but the room wasn't like what I thought an archive would be. It was just one person at a desk, sat in front of a door, with her hair done up in a bun and some tiny glasses. I'd have to talk to her to get in.

"Hello." I said to her when I got to the desk and she looked up at me with her sharp eyes and I wished I could have just Imperio'd her. But that was against the law, that's what Mr. Barrowmont had told me. "I'm here to see the archives."

"Position?"

"What?"

"What is your position in the Ministry?" The woman clarified, with a voice like fingernails on old parchment. I decided that I didn't like her.

"I Snatch. I'm a Snatcher." I said, then I nodded. "Official and everything."

"I'd hope so." The woman wasn't scowling, but it felt like she was. "That doesn't entitle you to tiered access. Public archives only."

"Oh," I said. Then we just stared at each other for a few seconds.

"Are you going to go in or not?" She asked.

I hurried in then, and I might have blushed, I was so embarrassed. When I stepped through the door, my jaw nearly fell right out, because there was just so much. There were file cabinets stretching from floor to ceiling, and there were a lot of ceiling, with a lot of stairs going up to them, and all of them marked with big wooden signs. Each further floor had a number, and no signs for topics on those cabinets, but that didn't matter as long as I stayed where I was meant to.

I couldn't see anyone else around, and I was sure I'd have heard them if they were there, so I let Bobble peek out and it was much easier to know where she wanted me to go that way. I just walked along the polished floor and she kept an eye out and snapped when she wanted me to turn. It didn't take long to find the place she wanted, which was marked as newspapers, and I walked along until I got to the one she was looking for.

"This one?" I asked her, and she nodded, so I pulled open the cabinet and the drawer extended so far that it was bigger than the cabinet. There was a whole month's of newspapers in there, of all different types, too. "Which one?" I asked, and she butted her head against the drawer. "All of them?" I couldn't stop my eyes going wide at that. "I can't take all of them! They'll know!" I whispered to her, and she just stared at me. I stared back at her. Then she looked at my wand and I felt all foolish.

I took out my wand and thought of the best spell for it. There was only one answer – the doubling charm. I held out my wand, did the wand motion, said the words, and there was nothing but a fizzle. I never failed, so it made my stomach twist up, but before I could panic, somebody cleared their throat behind me. I quickly shut Bobble into my pack before I turned around.

"New here, are you?" The fellow asked. He was lean and loomed over me, dressed in a robe too tight for my liking, but at least he had a smile you could trust. "Ah, everyone tries the doubling charm. Everyone who doesn't read the rules first." He laughed as he stepped up to the drawer I'd extended. "It'd be a felony if you were trying to copy anything higher than here, you know."

"Oh." It was all I could say. I was caught and any number of horrible things could have happened from there.

"Well, no harm done this time. Nobody will mind about a bunch of old newspapers." The young man rapped on the side of the drawer. "We can get those copied and in your pocket in a jiffy. Come along." The drawer closed by itself and he swung an arm down the path between the cabinets and I followed in his footsteps. He had to be safe, if he was helping me, and Bobble would have said otherwise.

We came up on a typewriter along the edge of one of the walls, and he tapped a few keys on it even though no paper was inside. It started to clatter by itself while he leaned against the wall to look at me.

"What do you need them for, anyway? You look like a student." A piece of paper had popped out of nowhere from the typewriter, big with two pages printed across it, and it hovered in the air.

"I'm," I stared at the device. Another page was done, and it placed itself right over the other while they floated. "Studying. I study."

"Then you have my sympathies." The young man laughed, and it seemed like he expected me to say something to that, but I couldn't think of anything. So I just watched the thing that wasn't a typewriter, as it typed a whole newspaper up, then had it fold on itself and sit in a pile. It happened with another and another until there was just as many as had been in the cabinet. "All done!" He'd regained the smile that had faded while we waited, then pulled a paper bag out from the drawer under the desk. He tucked the newspapers inside the bag, obviously with an extension charm, then held it out for me. "Good luck with your studying, Miss…?"

"Thank you." I said, then hurried out of there as quick as I could. I didn't want to see another person with skin for at least a few hours.


	8. Chapter 8

"Lean, tall, tight robes." Mckenzie silently made a note of that. Any encounters with Ministry officials would be vital to finding the truth of Harri's tale. Even if half of them were currently off of the job for evalutation of their actions during the Death Eater occupation, which was a headache for one of her colleagues to deal with. "Do you remember anything else about the man?"

"Um. Curly blonde hair. I can't remember his eyes. It was a few months ago."

"That's okay," Mckenzie said. "Perhaps you could tell me what you and Bobble did with these newspapers."

"Bobble used to read them. She couldn't read them by herself, because she didn't have any arms yet, but I could lay them out and she'd snap her jaw or tap with her foot and I could use my wand to turn the pages. She sat on the floor and I set on the bed to study. We did that a lot, until I got so tired that I had to go to bed." Harri's head drifted to the side. "There was another of her that I could snuggle up, but we couldn't cuddle properly until she got her arm. That made me a bit sad."

"I see." Mckenzie nodded. "And what is it that Bobble was looking for? I don't read them myself," They had a bad habit of being filled with borderline-propaganda nonsense in her experience. "But I don't think they tend to deal in the location of bones."

"I asked her that, too." Harri said. "But she couldn't answer, so I had to guess until she nodded. She was looking for things about my parents, like she agreed to before I got her leg."

"And she hoped to find them by choosing a random assortment of newspapers?"

"They weren't random! I knew how old I was and Bobble must have guessed from that. And it worked, anyway." Harri fingers clenched and closed, grasping for nothing.

"What happened next?" Mckenzie raised an eyebrow. Better not to let the girl's frustration build. "Was it something to do with your parents?"

"… No." Harri shook her head. "Bobble didn't get through it right away. I had to do a lot of Snatchings until she was ready and before she got that, we had the chance to get another one of her body parts."

"And where was that?"

"In the Forbidden Forest…"

* * *

I hadn't ever been near Hogwarts before, but I knew what it was and that there were a lot of defenses there. There were Death Eaters, but that just meant that they might find me and tell Mr. Barrowmont about what I was doing. I didn't have to see any of them, though, 'cause Bobble got me to Apparate a ways away and then we could just walk to the edges of the Forbidden Forest.

I knew that wasn't what a lot of people would do, because of the monsters, but it wasn't in Hogwarts walls and that meant there wouldn't be people there. I couldn't even see the castle through all of the trees twisting and covering up the sky.

I was comfortable, at least. I didn't want to wear full robes, because of branches and brambles and things, but I had some breeches and a shirt to wear instead, which did just enough to keep my warm even though my breath was fogging up. I let Bobble poke her head out of my pack, because she was the only one who knew where we were going, and stepped up to the borders of the forest, where the plants and shadows grew together.

I took a deep breath to fill up my lungs and twirled my wand around me, covering the both of us in a charm to keep us out of sight. That was meant to keep us out of the way of anything that might take an interest. It meant I couldn't see my own feet, or Bobble beside me, but I could feel the weight of her in my pack and it wasn't so dark that starlight couldn't seep through the canopy.

The forest floor was crunchy under my feet, covered in twigs and little stones that felt like they were there just to annoy me. But I was meant for just that kind of thing, for the trees that surrounded me and the shadows that seeped into mine and the quiet all around. Quiet but for the shuffling, distant cries, anyway. I did it when I was Snatching and I did it when I was learning how to duel and fight before.

That was why I could hear it when an arrow soared right through the air, and why I ducked low, scuttling back along where I'd already walked. Another arrow came, then another and another, thwupping into the little area where I'd been walking. But I was still hidden, and it stayed that way while I ducked low and the sound of hooves replaced the sound of arrows. The centaur that trotted up was huge, covered in thick red hair and as muscled as any man I'd ever seen.

But his eyes were sharp and that was what I was worried about. He paced around, threw his eyes everywhere, and it felt like the night had stretched on until he finally leaned down to collect the arrows he'd shot. I still didn't do anything, because that would just have been obvious, and centaurs are hunters. They know their business, and most duelists are too hasty, so I waited until he was sliding the last one into his quiver before I struck.

It wasn't so dramatic, though. All I had to do was erase two of his memories; picking up the arrows and firing them. He'd get on with his patrol and he wouldn't know anything was ever amiss, and he did just that. If he was dead, one centaur or another would find out or have seen, with how Divination works, and then the whole tribe might have attacked me, and that would have been a challenge no matter how inferior they are.

I waited for a little while before I went on, so I knew he was away, and let Bobble keep guiding me through the forest with little nudges and clacks to draw me back to the path.

I kept my wand at the ready as we stalked, invisible through the woods. There were lots of little creatures that didn't pass our way, but we did see an Acromantula crawling through the woods. I killed it with a curse – horrible things, they are. There were some muggle animals, too, wolves and foxes and some deer that didn't care much that I was there. I thought I saw something blue and metal for a moment, but it was rumbling off and Bobble was getting antsy, so I couldn't get any closer to it.

The thick trees faded, but not to small ones so much as broken ones. There were trails with broken trees all around, some were growing back in their place, but they were thin and sickly. The smaller animals were getting fewer too, and by the time I got there, I knew why.

There was a troll, sprawled out on a bed of leaves with a snore like a low hum. It was malformed all over, with skin that was green turning to orange, but pallid like it was turning to stone. Its hide was cracked and its hair was straggly, but thick all over, covering its legs and its arms and with a beard that reached right down to its belly. And it was big, bigger than any other forest troll I'd seen.

But what drew my eye was wrapped around its finger; a leg bone covered in runes, the foot and the top connected by a silver chain to form a ring. Every one of its fingers had some decoration, from a crown that just barely stretched over its pinky finger to a rope that dangled centaur skulls. Even its waist was decorated, with scraps of skin still covered in feathers, and a thick gold chain around its neck, made up of a bunch of necklaces tied together.

I had a long, hard think about what I was going to do. I had to get the leg back, and I knew that, but I also knew that there was a big chance of it going wrong. And there was no point in not taking a little extra time to make sure that I had a backup plan. One thing I knew was that trolls were resistant to magic, which meant that most of the tricks wouldn't work, even if it was groggy.

So I didn't cast a spell on the troll, but on some of the trees that had fallen around it. I transfigured them so that they slowly snaked around its limbs, forming complete circles, before digging their fallen roots as deep into the ground as they could. That would keep it pinned down, even if it woke up. Bobble chattered her teeth quietly in approval, and I smiled as I raised my wand, pointed it towards the chain holding the bone in place, and cut it.

Except it didn't cut it, because the chain stayed stuck with little more than a ting that rattled my eardrums. From how the troll's snoring stopped, I guessed that it had heard it to. So I thought quickly, and tried to transfigure the chain away with a flick of my wand. It held its form fast and I winced as I realized just what it was; goblin silver. My mind searched for an option, and I realized I could just transfigure the bone – it had been done before.

But the troll had wrenched its arm free of the ground, taking the tree and a hail of earth with it. I Apparated to the other side of the clearing to avoid the shower of dirt, but my line of sight was already lost, and the troll was using its free hand to help yank its other limbs free. I could hear its breathing like it was the wings of an angry dragon, and, even invisible, my heart pounded in fright.

I raised my wand as the troll gathered itself to its feet and unleashed a stream of water that crashed into the monster and slathered it from head to toe. The stench filling the area didn't get any sweeter, and it knew where I was, as it span on a gnarled heel, and I followed it up with a gout of flame that turned into a cloud of steam and sizzling flesh.

Just Incendio doesn't work on creatures like trolls – it's just magic. But water that's been burned up by it is steam like any other, and the troll got seared by everything that I'd just burned it with. The roar that came after made the leaves of its bed shake, its misshapen body tremble, but not even being burned all over could distract it from how angry it was. It barreled towards me and I Apparated to the other side of the clearing, but the mammoth monster just turned back around and kept heading towards me.

The ground was shaking with its steps, but I steeled myself and went for the classic giant-fighting trick: I gouged the ground out from right where it was about to step. Its foot sunk deep into the ground, its trunk-like leg followed, and it was almost up to its knee. But the rest of it kept falling, right at me, and its ugly face leered at me while it brought its hand around to swipe. A swish of my wand repulsed the crown around its pinky finger and stopped the momentum dead in its tracks.

The troll roared again, with its little finger bent right back on itself until it was nearly laid against the back of its hand. It used its other one to drag itself towards me, snapping with a jaw that could easily have fit five of me in, but I just managed to escape by rocketing high into the air above it.

My heart was pounding as I suspended myself there, watching the injured troll flail and pull its leg free of the hole I'd made. Its head snapped around, its ears twitching, in search of my invisible self. This was what I loved about dueling, without any of the guilt that had started to come with Snatching. It was a violent beast, mightier than most anything that walked in the wizarding world, and I was beating it.

I was so excited for that fraction of a second that I didn't see the troll grab hold of another fallen tree trunk, flail it at the air above him. By the time I thought to get away, my wand had already leaped up and unleashed a blast that shattered the tree trunk into a thousand shards that sunk into the troll's already-burned hide. It's roar was more of a squeal, but somehow made my stomach turn worse than any of its fury did.

The troll's panicked eyes looked up, searching for me, and I saw it again. The chain of gold around its neck. I let myself float down to the ground, just a little away from it, and raised my wand against the beast. "Reducio!" I said, just to hear myself say it, and the chains suddenly locked together.

The burned flesh of the troll's neck started to bulge between the links, but they kept getting smaller. Its pudgy fingers reached up to try to grab the chain, but it was far too small by that point. Its legs kicked at the ground, digging craters with every impact, and it kept flailing. Its heavy breaths turned into wheezes, and I watched the light fade from its eyes as the chain kept shrinking, shrinking, slicing through the flesh and the cartilage and the bone.

And then it was dead.

I was giddy was I watched the head hit the ground and I near enough skipped to get to the finger that had Bobble's leg. All I had to do was pull it off, unlink the chain, and it was free. I let the disillusionment charm fall and took Bobble out of her bag, laughing with her chattering, and put the leg right where it was meant to be. She stood up right beside me, just the right height, and although she didn't have lips, I knew she was smiling with me.


	9. Chapter 9

"Well." Mckenzie had to take a few moments to gather her thoughts in the wake of Harri's tale. She'd heard innumerable tales about people's apparent tales and monsters they'd fought, even ones designed to be gruesome, to frighten her. But Harri's tone as she spoke about it, so matter-of-factly, and more enthusiastic than the rest of her tale, made her worry for her health even more. "That certainly was a feat. Did you tell anyone else about it?"

"No, no. It was a secret between me and Bobble." Harri said. "Just us. I didn't trust Carma and Rabbit that much anyway. And Mr. Barrowmont… I didn't feel like telling him. It would have been bad."

"Why do you believe that?" Mckenzie leaned forward.

"He was very strict about my bedtimes and my studying and my tutoring, and all of the tutors were, too. I had to be very good and I couldn't break any of the rules, or I'd be punished."

"If you're okay with sharing, what form would this punishment take?" Mckenzie asked. She had her suspicions about it already. Although she hadn't seen any physical scars on Harri, she hadn't been subject to a mediwitch's examination, and the mental effects were all too clear.

"Not being able to play with my toys, or read my books, or walk around the garden, or study the charms I wanted. Mr. Barrowmont would take away all of my charm and hex and curse books and make me read theory." Harri exhaled through her nose. "Theory is okay for learning about some things, but I like to do magic, with my wand, not just see it. And I'd be locked in my room sometimes. But not when I was a good girl."

"And when was the last time you were considered a bad girl, at the time when you were retrieving parts of Bobble?"

"I..." Harri shifted in her seat. "A few years. When I got smart enough to know that following the rules got me more good things than not following them."

"But again, you were willing to break them for Bobble's sake. Did you feel any resentment towards Mr. Barrowmont? For his lessons? Perhaps for potentially posing a problem when it came to fixing your friend?"

Harri shrugged.

"Let's continue with what happened after you found Bobble's other leg."

"Okay." Harri nodded. "I wanted to take her out with me..."

* * *

So the next time I had to go Snatching, I gave her one of my cloaks. It was long and black and wrapped her from skull to toe, with a big hood and a scarf so that you couldn't see she didn't have skin even if you looked closely. She walked about all graceful, too, like she was completely used to walking around and hadn't taken such a long break from it. I think you could say she swooped about, kind of like a Dementor, but not nearly as mean.

I Apparated to the meeting place with her right alongside me. It was by a river, lots of forest and nature all around, and the sky was spitting rain so we weren't likely to run into any Muggles. None that would have noticed us in our wizarding clothes anyway.

Carma and Rabbit were already there, hiding beneath a tree even though they could have just used an Impervius charm. That's what I did for me and Bobble, so that we wouldn't have to worry about getting wet – or it clinging to her cloak and showing off all of her bones.

"Hey." Carma narrowed her eyes at me. "Who's that?"

"This is my friend." I told her, and Bobble just stood there in her cloak. "Inferius." That put a little bit of fear in her eyes, which I didn't mean to do. I thought it was going to make them stop asking questions, and it was still true, but not that they'd be really scared. "Let's get Snatching." I said then, to let them get past it.

"You're keeping tha thting with you, aren't you? it's just that I don't want it anywhere near me," Rabbit said, as he got to his feet. "Meaning no offense, but dead things ought to stay still."

"Yeah, it's okay." I said. I thought it was a little rude to dead people, but I didn't know him well enough to say as much. We got to the Snatching right after, and Carma had a good trail that time. Bobble stayed right by me and I Apparated with her whenever we had to, and she did seem to scare the people, although they wouldn't have put up much of a fight anyway. They thought they could use a hex on her, but that didn't work, because she has no flesh, but by then they were all on the floor anyway.

It wasn't so bad when it went quickly. There wasn't much time to worry about how scared they were. And no kids, which was good, because we'd seen a lot of teenagers by then. Some of them were pretty good, but...there were three of us, and me, and they didn't stand a chance. I wondered what it would have been like to talk with them, sometimes, but there wasn't a chance to. Find, capture, take in. Simple and easy, at least, to the other two.

The Ministry people didn't take much notice of Bobble when we walked in, though she was watching them when we walked in. I think they must have known not to bother people in dark robes. Anyway, we split up and I went home and I knew that it was going to be dinner with Mr. Barrowmont that night. I had to get changed into clean clothes, and I made sure to wash Bobble, too, because she'd got some mud and grass and twigs on her feet from all the walking.

"All done!" I smiled at her when I was done and heard a bell from downstairs. "Okay, I have to have dinner with Mr. Barrowmont. Do you want me to set out some books for you?" I asked her, but she shook her head, and then stood by the door. "You want to go to dinner? You can't." And then she stared at me and I felt guilty and sighed. "Mr. Barrowmont might get mad. You can...stay outside, if you want. And you can listen in. You can't eat anyway, so it'll be just like you're there."

She seemed okay with that, so we went down the stairs. The hallway had a lot of doors, although the rooms weren't anything special, just spare rooms for dueling or books or things to use magic on, except for Mr. Barrowmont's room, which I wasn't allowed to go into. It was the one right at the end of the room, passed the dark floor and the dark walls and the dark ceilings, and I'd never dared to walk in myself.

The dining room was pretty big, with a table at the center and a polished wood floor and a candelabra hanging from the ceiling that gave it uneven lighting. There were some Lumos lanterns on the walls, which some of my tutors used for help in dueling and any spells that needed more space, but not much else for decoration. I went in first, but Bobble stood just outside the door and I sneaked a smile to her before I closed it.

Mr. Barrowmont was already at the table, sitting at the middle with some plates and bowls spread out between him and the opposite seat. That was mine, the only other one at the table, and I could pick whatever I wanted out of the bowls. It was always tasty, and had everything from greasy meat to plump veg. I didn't like eating the former very much, but Mr. Barrowmont said that I had to eat it if I wanted to grow up strong. I was already grown up by then, but he said that I needed to stay strong and that meant more meat.

"Good evening, Harrietta." Mr. Barrowmont's voice was soft like always, though a little strained. It wasn't often like that, but just looking at him I could see it. I knew how to look at someone and see where they were weakest, and he had little bags under his eyes and there wasn't as much energy to his voice. He was still groomed right, dressed properly, but you can't hide fatigue with tailoring. "How was your day?"

"It went well," I told him while I sat in my seat and started to fill my plate. "We caught the fugitives and I got paid for it. I've got enough money to buy a whole bunch of things when we go shopping next." I looked up and saw him looking at me and paused. "And some put aside for savings." Then he nodded and I smiled. It just slipped my mind sometimes 'cause I hadn't gotten into the habit of it.

"Word got back to me of your time today." Mr. Barrowmont said. He wasn't angry or even looking at me sternly, but my nerves tensed all the same. If that was true, then he had to know that I'd taken Bobble with me and I'd have to think quick of some way out of it. I might have just done as I was told, but I couldn't do that to Bobble. "Carma and Rabbit, I believe, claimed that you brought an Inferius with you. I wonder what you have to say on the matter."

"I didn't bring an actual Inferius," I said. "I don't have any bodies to make one with." My head ran through a few excuses, a way to do what I did without telling how I did what I did. "But I thought a decoy would be good, for Snatching, and the Inferius skull gave me the idea. If I trust transfigure some things to look like a person and animate it, like with statues, then it's good enough for fighting."

Mr. Barrowmont looked at me then and I didn't know what he was thinking of it, but I was worried all the same. I'd have believed it, but I wanted to. And it wasn't like he could just guess about me finding the rest of Bobble all over Britain.

"Clever," Mr. Barrowmont said. I felt a sword being lifted off of my neck. "But try not to disturb them. Rabbit is of a nervous disposition and Carma has an itchy wand. Tell me of how it went." He said, so I did. I told him all about the people we'd Snatched, and all the ones we'd Snatched before, and all of the studying I'd been doing, and he took me through a few mental tests, though he sent me off to my bedroom before we'd gone through many.

Bobble followed me up to my bedroom, walking all silent, and walked over to the drawer I'd cleared out for her newspapers. I went over and opened it for her and saw a bunch of the newspapers. Clippings had been torn out, with teeth marks on the edges, and piled up as neatly as they could have been. And with them were pages out of a journal, pictures, too.

Bobble was chattering her teeth.


	10. Chapter 10

Mckenzie waited for Harri to continue. She watched her until it was clear that she wasn't going to speak again, then cleared her throat.

"Harri? Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Harri didn't look her in the eyes.

"Would you like to continue your story? I was quite looking forward to the next bit."

Harri shook her head.

"Okay. You don't have to. But I would like to know why you won't." Mckenzie had a feeling that she could get her to talk with just a little more pushing. She wouldn't have mentioned anything if she didn't want to talk about it, not unless she was the most foolish manipulator in the world.

"It's private," Harri whispered. She looked somehow pathetic, slumped over in her chair, barely speaking, or even able to move. If they were tucked into a living room somewhere, she might have looked comfortable, but the stark walls of the questioning room only made her look more ill-at-ease.

"From what you've told me so far, I think I have a good guess as to what's private about it," Mckenzie said. "If it has something to do with your parents, then what Bobble discovered reveals things about your life, where you came from… Things that you haven't shared with any one before."

Harri nodded.

"I think it's safe to say that a lot of what you've told me has been kept secret. Would that be right?" Harri nodded again. "And while you haven't known me for long, you've trusted me with everything so far, which I am particularly thankful for, by the way. Why is that?"

"You're..." Harri shrugged helplessly. "Nice."

"Thank you. I think you're nice, too." Mckenzie flashed the girl a smile. "Have I done anything that would make you not trust me with this information, too?" She shook her head again. "Then why not take one more chance and trust me with this, as well? I'm here to find out the truth, and make sure that you're treated properly, and the more of the former I get, the more of the latter I'll be able to do. If you believe that you're innocent, then anything you tell me will do nothing but prove it."

Harri met her with a long look, and all Mckenzie could do was bear it. She let the seconds tick by until Harri nodded.

"Okay. I'll tell you what happened." Harri inhaled shakily. "I picked up the first clipping..."

* * *

There was a picture of a man and a picture of the woman at the top. The man had blonde hair, a little curly, like mine, but cut short, and these sharp cheekbones. He looked quite young in it, and he was wearing Hogwarts robes that were flowing in the wind and it said "Benedict Candlekeep, Class of 1975" at the bottom.

And beside that was the woman, and it was a different picture, set against a boring wall instead of a caslte and she was older, too. She had eyes like mine, and she was slight, like me, too, and it said "Rhea Candlekeep nee Solshire, Ministry Treasury Analyst, Office Christmas Party 1979" underneath it.

Then there was a headline and it said "Young Couple Found Dead in Diagon Alley Apartments. Another Death Eater Attack Suspected." So I looked down at the text beneath it and I read that out loud to myself, though I did it quietly.

"Another couple was found dead in their apartment last night, March 13th, after several late-night shoppers in Diagon Alley heard a disturabnce. Aurors arrived on the scene at around midnight and our sources claim there were signs of dueling in the home. While this isn't verified, one thing is certain: The newlyweds were most certainly murdered.

Although Death Eater involvement has yet to be determined, both were accomplished duelists, with Benedict having joined the Silver Spears Dueling Club not long after graduating. The premeditated nature of the attack aligns with previous wizard-murders committed by the Death Eaters,, along with the victims. Both were avidly outspoken against the Death Eaters, and have on several occasions attended rallies for Muggle-Wizard equality.

The Daily Prophet has reached out to several friends of Mr. and Mrs. Candlekeep, whose words will be included in the weekly obituaries this Sunday. The Silver Spears Dueling Club has pledged their wands to a traditional duelist's send-off to Benedict Candlekeep, as time allows, and Reynard Barrowmont, Head of the Treasury, has released a statement on behalf of the Ministry Treasury Office, which will also be featured."

I looked to Bobble then and I frowned at her.

"So what does that mean?" I asked her, 'cause I couldn't figure it out. I knew that she must have thought that the Candlekeep people were my parents, but I couldn't see why just because they got murdered on the same month. And by Death Eaters, who I knew Mr. Barrowmont worked for, which didn't make sense. Muggles hurt my parents.

Bobble chattered her teeth in a way that I thought was a little condescending, but then she nodded at the next clipping. It was smaller and only had a small passage.

"Reynard Barrowmont, Head of the Treasury, is taking a temporary leave of absence due to unexpected stress. Our contacts in the Ministry Treasury have noted that Mr. Barrowmont has been working via correspondence of late, and that the recent loss of his employee, Rhea Candlekeep, may have pushed him towards the decision, on top of the stress we're all feeling as the Wizarding War is waged around us. Many say that he was particularly fond of the young woman, and that he had an emergency visit to St. Mungo's the day after she was discovered dead. Taking his place will be..."

"Okay. You think that Mr. Barrowmont killed them." I said, but I couldn't say anything else, because she nodded at the next thing. It was journal pages, just a couple of them. They had things like "Maternity gift," and "Finance Meeting," and "Rhea – Business Lunch," all neatly written on them, in Mr. Barrowmont's handwriting. At the bottom of the first page was an entry that was crossed out and replaced with "St. Mungo's."

The next bunch of pages had their entries crossed out, too, and all had different things there. Things like "Finding carer," and "Furniture shopping," and "Purchase clothes". I looked over at Bobble and frowned at her, so she nodded at my hand and I held it over the writing on the pages. I kept an eye on her while my finger followed the lines, all the way until I got to the entry for lunch with Rhea Candlekeep on March 15th.

"What?" All the thoughts running in my head were making me upset. "The meeting?" Bobble shook her head. "Rhea Candlekeep?" She shook it again. "The words?" Again. "The...meeting?" Again. "The date?" Again. "The...the...ink?" Then she nodded. "What about it?" And then she bent over to peer at it, so I did the same, but I couldn't see anything. "It's all just ink." I said, then she nodded, and lifted her sight up to the entry above. It was crossed-out, too, but then I noticed it. It was crossed out with a different kind of ink.

"Mr. Barrowmont was using a different kind of ink to cross-out the meeting than all of his other plans. But that doesn't make sense if he found them out at the same time..." I said, then Bobble looked at the entry further up. The visit to St. Mungo's was written in the new ink, too. "Mr. Barrowmont was using different ink on the day after the murder...but he knew he wouldn't meet Rhea Candlekeep before then. Because...she was dead."

Bobble nodded again.

"But...how did you even get this?" Bobble looked in the direction where Mr. Barrowmont's room was. "You went in there? When? Was..." My eyes froze. "When I was at dinner?" And she nodded, laughing with a chatter, and I felt all the fear run through me at once. I had to grip the table not to fall over and let my head catch up with me. He didn't know. He'd have said something. He didn't know Bobble had got in. I was okay. For a moment.

Bobble was looking at a slip in the drawer, next to the other pieces, so I breathed in, steadied myself, and took that out, too. I'd never seen one before, but it said "medical record" at the top, so I didn't have to figure it out. It was for Mr. Barrowmont, on March 14th, and the injuries were for magical cuts, scorches, and wand burns. Dueling injuries.

"I...okay...okay," I said, because I couldn't get it all in my head. "Mr. Barrowmont knew he couldn't meet with Rhea Candlekeep before she died...and her knew her well...and he had dueling wounds the day after...and he knew her...and he had to take time off for some reason...but that just, that just makes it look like he was...involved. That doesn't mean they're my parents. The papers don't even mention a baby, and they would, if they had one."

Bobble nodded me back towards the first clipping, with the Candlekeep couple on, so I picked it up in my trembling fingers. She tilted her head to the side, like she was turning it upside down. So I did that to the picture. Benedict fell to the roof of the photograph first, and then Rhea did. And when she did, the rest of her body moved too, and showed that she was pregnant. Really pregnant. Just three months before she died…


	11. Chapter 11

"How did you feel about discovering Mr. Barrowmont may have been involved with the murder of your parents?" Mckenzie asked. Whether Harri was the daughter of the Candlekeeps, she didn't know, though it was something that would have to be investigated before their next interview.

"I… It didn't feel right," Harri muttered. "I was upset before and I got hurt in lessons and when Mr. Barrowmont told me about my parents, but it wasn't like that, that time. It felt kind of like metal, how it's solid and there and you can touch it, and it weighs you down. Like that?" She peered up then, her eyes plump with desperation.

"I understand perfectly." Mckenzie nodded. There had been all too many people who'd suffered in the Second Wizarding War. Compared to some of them, her pain had been barely more than a footnote, but she knew that sense of dread as well as any of htem. "The man you trusted to take care of you, as he had for many years, seemed to be a villain."

"Yeah, and, it wasn't just that it was him. I knew he was there in the house and that he was going to be around and that was bad, even if he didn't know that I knew, but it was the house itself and all the training, like I just noticed that I was sitting on a fire or the edge of a cliff about to fall down. And all of the skills I learned, it's, they were because of Mr. Barrowmont. So could I use them and still feel like me, since they were because of him? But… He still raised me, and I liked that, but murder, and..." Her shoulders slumped. "I hated it."

"What about Bobble? She revealed all of this to you, didn't she?" Mckenzie spoke softly. "Even if you've been taught not to hex the messenger..."

"No!" Harri shook her head like something was caught in her ears. "Bobble was helping me because I asked her to and if I got mad at her for that then I'd just be dumb. I just, I didn't like how I didn't know what to do with what I knew. And Bobble helped me again anyway."

"How did she do that?" Mckenzie leaned in. Perhaps she'd get something she could sink her teeth into.

"Well, I wasn't feeling any better about Snatching..."

* * *

It was just as horrible as it was before, but now it was filled with the fact that I was doing it for Mr. Barrowmont when he'd done something horrible. And the people I was Snatching...it didn't feel like they deserved it, much, any more, if it wasn't Muggles who hurt my parents. It was still the law, but it felt like it wasn't right, because Muggles didn't hurt me and I looked at what the Ministry was saying and it didn't make sense with how magic works.

And I just didn't really believe it any more. I could believe in my dueling and my charms and how to fight, because I could do it and see it and know that it's true because of that. But Mr. Barrowmont had told me a lie about my parents and that made it harder to believe anything else he'd said. It was like somebody taking the bottom out of a tower of cards and the rest of it was ready to topple if I looked at it any harder.

I don't know if Bobble noticed it herself or if she just saw that Carma and Rabbit were giving me odd looks, but she figured out a way to make me feel better. I'd always been happy about helping her fix her body and I agreed to do that just like she agreed to help me find my parents, so that was what she decided to do next. She had to read some books to find out about this one, but she figured it out and showed me and I knew right away it was going to be a challenge.

It was the Tower of London, right in the middle of Muggle territory and guarded and you had to pay to get in. I didn't know a lot about Muggle things, aside from about their security and to not get caught on it and things like that, but I knew that I couldn't go in the middle of the night, not while Mr. Barrowont was in. I could only go after an early Snatching, in the midday, but at least I knew what I had to steal, because Bobble had found a picture of it.

It was one of the Muggle ones that doesn't move and Bobble had to put her face right up to it to get me to see it too. There was a sword held up in a rack, and it had an ornate hilt with all of these designs on it, engraved into the material. And one of them was an arm, a skeleton arm, and if I looked really close, I could see that it was colored just a little differently from the rest. And closer, I saw it was speckled with runes. Just like the rest of Bobble.

"That's your arm!" I told her and she nodded. It was a good thing I had my Muggle clothes for Snatching, so all we had to do was plan out how to do it. We didn't have to wait for very long until a Snatching finished early, but I had to keep Bobble's arm in mind to get through them.

I put a disillusionment charm on Bobble before we Apparated; it was just the easiest way. I chose an alley to do it and nobody was there, so I got changed into a fresh set of Muggle clothes and transfigured some rocks into Muggle money. We weren't so far from the Tower of London, but the walk there was filled with so many people that I struggled to keep track of where my own feet were going. I had to keep a hand on Bobble, 'cause she was invisible and I didn't want to lose her.

I watched a bunch of families while we waited in the line to get into the tower. There were kids young and old and parents and things like that, all excited to get inside and see all of the things there. There were people by themselves, or couples, and almost everyone got excited when a bunch of men dressed in red uniforms walked by. It made me even more determined to steal the sword properly, or I'd ruin all of their days.

I kept to myself as we went through to the Armory, where arms and armor were all caged behind glass displays. It wasn't a huge room, but it did have a tall ceiling, with wooden beams separating the displays on either side, an open window on the wall between them, and then the door that stood open to let people in. There were maybe six people in there, one family and a couple, but an extra pair of eyes on the wall. One of those Muggle cameras that work by themselves.

As soon as I saw the sword behind a display, I knew what I had to do. I went over to the window and held by wand in the baggy sleeves of my coat. The first thing I did was cast a disillusionment charm on the camera, so it couldn't record anything – that's how they work, with light.

Then I looked down at the guards marching below and poked my head out of the window. I had to cast two charms. One was the quietening charm, just for a moment, followed by a bird-conjuring charm. It makes a bunch of birds that attack people, normally with a loud sound, but they were silent when they poured out and flew down to attack the guards in a flurry of feathers and tweets. The guards started yelling in surprise, the people and other staff, too, and I slipped out of the way just as the other people in the room ran to the window to see what was happening.

Then I threw a locking charm at the door, which closed itself, and pursed my lips while I transfigured the glass that separated the room from the sword. The sheer surface turned into a little stone, and I stepped up, one hand on the sword and one hand in my pack. They both grasped hilts, pulled the swords free, and swapped their places. I'd had time and pictures to transfigure a copy, even if the copy didn't have what I was there for.

I closed my bag, and the sword fit in the extended space just like the replica had, then hopped back. I countered the transfiguration on the glass pane, and it popped back into place like it had never been moved. I dismissed the rest of my charms next, the locked door, then moved back to the window in time to dismiss the charm on the camera. I smiled to myself, my task done, and waited for the commotion outside to end before I left.

Me and Bobble got to the alley we'd left in, I looked both ways, and we Apparated back to my room. I undid the disillusionment charm on her and laid the sword out on my bed. It wasn't anything special, not that I could see, aside from having Bobble's arm. All it could was countering the shrinking charm on it, and then Bobble had her arm! I put it on for her and she chattered her teeth and it hung there for a moment before she flexed her hand.

She could finally move! The first thing we did was hug, and she squeezed me nice and tight against her. Even though everything else was upsetting me, I still had Bobble. And she was almost whole.


	12. Chapter 12

Mckenzie looked at the clock. The ticking told her their time was almost up, but she was sure she was getting closer to the things she needed to know. And everything she learned told her more about Harri, whether it was her mindset or what might have been her delusions, or just information about her heritage. She couldn't begin to put together a plan for treatment, but she didn't have to. She just had to make sure that Harri kept trusting her.

"Did your and Bobble's relationship change much, with her having acquired an arm?" Mckenzie asked.

"Not a whole lot, except she could cuddle me when we went to sleep," Harri was smiling. "And she could write things down if she wanted to. She wouldn't write down a lot, but sometimes I'd have notes left for me if I left her home while I went Snatching, or just overnight. About spells to look at, those kinds of things. 'Cause she could do her own studying, without my having to grab things for her. But mostly she seemed happier. I don't know how, but, she did. Like, she had more energy."

"I see." Mckenzie nodded. That was as much as she'd expected. "I notice that your bond with Bobble was particularly strong, despite her being only a skeleton. I say only, she was obviously more than that, but appearances and all that."

"It didn't matter to me." Harri shrugged. "Bobble was Bobble and if she was a skeleton, that was okay."

"And she was the only person who you had a real bond with, aside from Mr. Barrowmont. Your tutors didn't stick around for long and you didn't get out much, correct?"

"Yeah."

"Did you ever wish that you could form relationships with other witches and wizards? Perhaps make friends?"

"I… I was busy." Harri was gazing off to the side again. "I had to practice my dueling, and study it, and practice more. Mr. Barrowmont made sure that I was doing that as often as I could. If I had friends, they'd have just taken time away from it. That was what he said, anyway. I don't know if that's really true."

"I'm of the opinion that one can be a perfectly accomplished individual with friends. It might be even be easier," Mckenzie said.

"It didn't matter, anyway," Harri furrowed her brow. "Mr. Barrowmont couldn't have stopped me from making more friends..."

* * *

It was a day like any other, to me, anyway. We'd got done with our Snatching early and I'd gone home and I was just finished changing when I heard the bell that Mr. Barrowmont used to summon me. I thought it was weird, because it was much too early for dinner and we hadn't had it planned that day and he ought to have been at work. But I went anyway, Bobble watching me when I did, and padded down the stairs to find him in the dinning room.

Mr. Barrowmont had pulled out one of the chairs, lit the candles, and he was just sitting there. He looked up when I closed the door behind me.

"Good evening, Harrieta." He was speaking softly, like always, but I didn't know where to go. I just stood there and waited for him to go on, while all kinds of thoughts filled my head. Maybe he knew about Bobble or my parents or how Bobble had stolen some of his journal. "The Dark Lord has summoned his followers to a battle at Hogwarts. We are to leave immediately."

"Hogwarts?" I said, frowning. "Hogwarts is a school."

"I am aware."

"What kind of fight is there going to be at Hogwarts?" I asked him. There was no reason for anyone to duel there, not unless they needed to take care of something in the forest. And I wouldn't have been summoned for that, and neither would Mr. Barrowmont.

"The Dark Lord hopes for a quick one." Mr. Barrowmont's eyes were watching me, then. I was questioning him, which I shouldn't have done. "Hogwarts is playing host to traitors and criminals and The Dark Lord hopes to root them out, but some of the students and faculty, among other elements, are making it difficult. We are needed."

"I..." All of the Snatchings flared to the front of my head, from the first ones to the last, and everything in-between. All of the fear in their eyes, all of their panicked movements, even the ones who just resigned themselves to it. But mostly, it was the kids, the ones a little younger and the ones a lot younger, who didn't even know what was going on. The thought of attacking a whole school of them made my stomach turn. "I don't want to."

Silence hung in the air.

"Why not?" Mr. Barrowmont asked it like it was a casual question, but his eyes were ice.

"I don't want to… I don't want to do anything," Once I'd started, it all came out. "I don't want to Snatch any more children and I don't want to duel any more scared people and I don't want to help the Ministry or hurt the Muggles or do what you say! It's not right and it doesn't feel right and I don't want to do it and I'm not going!" I was trembling with the effort, but at least I was still standing up.

"You're going to." Mr. Barrowmont got to his feet then.

"No!" I stared at him.

"I am telling you t-"

"You're not my father!" I accused him, but it didn't bite how I'd hoped. It hurt me more.

"Correct." Mr. Barrowmont didn't miss a beat. "I am not your father. But I am your guardian, and you will obe-"

"You killed my dad! And my mom!"

Mr. Barrowmont's eyebrow quirked up, just a little, just enough to make the pain in my stomach that much worse. He was actually reacting to me. I'd struck a nerve and I didn't know if it was good or bad, but I could see what he was doing next.

"We'll discuss this later." Mr. Barrowmont drew his wand then and hurled a hex at me. My wand was in my hand on instinct, and the spell slammed into the wall behind me with a crack. I didn't want to fight him, but he'd trained me too. My body couldn't not fight. He flung another and I deflected it just the same, then another, the another, three in rapid succession that I deflected just as easily. The wall behind me was covered in a network of fractures.

"Lower your wand," Mr. Barrowmont instructed me, as a swept his wand low and sent all of the dining chairs right for me. I Apparated away to the other side of the room as they slammed into the wall, and he'd already turned, flung the table at me. A flick of my wrist turned the massive table into a tiny one, which clattered harmlessly to the floor. My eyes were on him, trying to read his emotions, but he wasn't even breaking a sweat.

"Behave, Harrietta. This is your final warning." Mr. Barrowmont's wand lashed at the air and a rip echoed through the room. The wallpaper behind me had torn itself off of the walls, into a thousand strings that sought to wrap around me. I twirled my wand in my hands and a circle of fire formed around me, which burned the wallpaper into ash around my feet, then deflected the curse that Mr. Barrowmont sent my way to the floor. The wood warped at my feet, but nothing happened.

"Stop it!" I yelled at Mr. Barrowmont. "Stop fighting me!"

"I am not fighting you." Mr. Barrowmont threw a hail of hexes, jinxes, curses at me, but I batted them all away, one after the other. "This is a warm-up for the battle to come. Fighting you looks like this." He'd cast a curse at me and in the split second before it hit, my mind ran through a hundred ways to try to counter it, and found none. My whole body froze up and collapsed to the floor. I could just barely see Mr. Barrowmont strolling over

"Do you honestly believe that I would have so skilled a duelist tutored in my home with no way to defeat her?" Mr. Barrowmont asked, his tone as measured as it always was. "You were taught to duel with a flaw, Harrietta, from the very first lessons I gave you. Your tutors were given strict instructions – your style was not to be altered, not from the one I'd taught you. I designed it as such myself. To most, it is as impenetrable as any skilled duelist. You will never be able to best me in a duel, Harrietta. I hope you think on this when we return from Hogwarts." He pointed his wand at me. "Imperi-"

Mr. Barrowmont's hand was seized by another, one made of bone. Not even a second had gone by before it crushed his digits with a crack, then the rest of his hand, and his wand clattered to the ground as he cried out in pain. It was Bobble, I could see her, but I couldn't do anything but watch. She'd yanked his arm and it popped, dangling at his side, and he crumpled to the floor beside me with another cry of pain.

He reached out for his wand with his other hand, but Bobble had stomped on his wrist and a snap echoed in the dining room. He was crying in pain again, and tears were in his eyes, but he couldn't do anything when she lifted her hand up and scratched him across his chest. Then she did it again, and again, until he was bleeding all over his clothes. And she didn't stop.

Bobble kept cutting him and tearing his flesh and breaking his bones until he couldn't even cry any more. He looked like a pile of meat with a face and Bobble was standing there, the blood pooling in the carvings in her bones and splattered everywhere else. She knelt down next to me and cradled me to her, stroking my back. I was still crying by the time I could control my own body again and I clung tightly to her.

I was free.


	13. Chapter 13

"That's an interesting choice of words." Mckenzie couldn't help but smile. Even if she were to believe the entirety of Harri's story, it was perhaps the most unfortunate choice she'd heard in a long while. "Did you not consider the idea that there would be people looking for Mr. Barrowmont's killer?"

"Yeah, just… Just not right away." Harri glanced up at Mckenzie. "I had too many emotions right then and I couldn't even move for a little while. Bobble had to get me to to do it. That's when I knew we had to go away, or the Death Eaters might have come and got us and punished me for killing Mr. Barrowmont."

"Which, of course, never happened." She got Aurors instead.

"I didn't hear about the Dark Lord being beaten for a while," Mckenzie said. "I didn't know where to go or what to do. I mostly stayed at Muggle places, transfiguring rocks into money and trying to get around. All I could really think about was finishing fixing Bobble and hoping she knew how to make things better. I only heard about the Battle of Hogwarts because Bobble wrote I had to go to Hogsmeade. And that's when I heard about Mr. Barrowmont being murdered and no suspect and Aurors and everything."

"I can't imagine it was an easy time for you. Especially once you knew that Aurors might have been on your trail." Mckenzie nodded. "How did you feel about his death being described as a murder? In your telling, it would be self-defense and not even your actions that killed him."

"I, he, we..." Harri stared down at the desk and shook her head. "It didn't matter, just that I couldn't let people know it was me."

"That must have proven difficult when rumors started to emerge about a protege of Mr. Barrowmont's." Ah, the secrets that came out when the Ministry discovered he was a Death Eater, all the people he hired to tutor Harrietta, the things other Death Eater sympathizers revealed about her. It was meant to be kept secret, but things rarely seemed to stay that way.

"And I didn't know how to talk to people to tell them anything, and I knew Aurors wouldn't help me, and I didn't know what would happen to Bobble, especially after the Dark Lord caused so much trouble with his Inferi. It wouldn't be safe, but we couldn't go anywhere else until we found Bobble's arm, which was in Britain."

"Did you end up finding it?" Mckenzie asked.

"Yeah..."

* * *

Her name was Petra Puffguts. It was really hard to find anything out about her, and most of it was wrapped up in places I couldn't go, like the Ministry or St. Mungo's. It's only 'cause Bobble's arm was sold so many times that we could find it at all, and I had to eavesdrop and sneak into places and sometimes ask people something to get that much. And people didn't talk about her that much, anyway, 'cause she was a hermit.

That means people who live alone in the wild, by the way. She had her own little peninsula just off of the Scotland coast, with rocks jutting all around the edges and thick trees all around and the only place on it that seemed like it had been touch was right at the center. A clearing where her house was, but it wasn't a real house, so much as a tree that had bee transfigured to look like one and she'd moved all of her stuff in. I knew that she'd had alarms and things, 'cause people said she used to be good at magic, but I wanted to try to get it nicely, so that didn't matter to me…

We flew in, me and Bobble. We were both wearing cloaks with hoods on, but it was still as cold as anything when we landed in the garden around her house. It was organized like real garden there, with patches of flowers and fruits and vegetables and she had a little graveyard walled off to the side, though it only had a few gravestones there. I walked up to the door and Bobble stood beside it, then I knocked. She'd have known I was there anyway, I'd noticed the alarms go off, myself. Carma had taught me to notice them.

"I'm here." Mrs. Puffguts opened the door and I looked her over. She was dressed properly, even though it was night when I went, with dark robes that fitted her well even though she was all bony and tall. Her hair was white and was pulled back taut, and her wrinkly skin seemed tensed like a bowstring. Like it could go off at any moment, which her eyes were, but that wasn't what I was most interested in. All I could see then was Bobble's arm.

It was on Mrs. Puffguts' shoulder. I couldn't see the joint, but it was where a normal arm ought to have been, and she'd used it to open the door, so it must have been working.

"Quit starin'." Mrs. Puffguts told me and I looked up at her then. "What's your business intruding on my home at this time of day?" She was all spikes, even her voice.

"Um, that." I nodded at her arm. "That's my friends. I need it."

"Is it, now?" Mrs. Puffguts flexed the fingers of her arm in front of her. "Seems to me that I paid for it and I've had it for twenty years and you haven't got nothin' better to replace it with. So I'd say it's staying mine, no matter how dark and hooded you and your friend be."

"Plea-"

"No." Mrs. Puffguts had steel in her voice. Old steel, but I've heard that it's just as strong. "My arm. My body. My home. How would you like it if I came to your house and demanded a leg?"

I bit my lip in worry then, because I didn't want to hurt her. She looked frail, everything but Bobble's arm did, anyway. Bobble wasn't saying much in the way of help, because she couldn't talk, and she was just looking at me off to the side. And there was only one way that I was going to get it, and the Ministry was chasing me anyway, and it would only be for a moment, and it belonged to Bobble anyway…

"Imperio." I said, and Mrs. Puffguts went still for a second. Then another. But on the third, she'd drawn her wand and tried to hex me away. I deflected it just the last second, but I stepped back anyway, instincts taking over. You couldn't duel in arms' reach.

"That," Mrs. Puffguts' face was all twisted up in anger as she strode out of her house. "Don't work on me," She switched wand hands and yanked a bead off of her bracelet. "No more." She tossed it at me and made it grow at the last second. It was soaring through the air too fast for something so big, and I hadn't taken down her Apparation wards, so all I could do was call up a wall of earth to catch it before it hit me. That meant there was cover, at least, and she wouldn't see me for the next little while.

"Y'think you go through as much as I have without learning a thing, little girl?" Mrs. Puffguts voice rang out as I cast a disillusionment charm on myself and crept around the wall. I could see Bobble, stalking silently around the witch, on her far side. "No… You might know your wandwork, you might be talented, but none of that matters so much as will." She was casting her eyes about, then span around to caste a curse at Bobble. She was sent flying backwards, but twisted through the air to land on her feet.

I cast a stunning charm at her back, but she seemed to notice something was up just in time to throw up shield.

"Revelio!" Her voice cut through the night and her spell through my charm, as I was revealed and she brought the earth up from under me to upset my balance. I was ready to curse her back when Bobble darted at her back, into her knees, and knocked them right out from under her with a sound that made my gut turn. Her wand fell out of her hand then, and all of the fight she'd just had went right out of her.

Bobble didn't kill her, at least, and she wasn't screaming, but you couldn't jumble someone's legs like that and have them not feel pain at all. She was wincing and her breathing was ragged when I walked up to her and leaned down. I rolled her sleeve up to see where the arm met her flesh, with a kind of wooden socket. It took me a couple of moments to figure out how to unlock it, with a little twist and a pull that pulled Bobble's arm out of the wooden socket.

"Please...my arm..." Mrs. Puffguts whimpered and I looked down at her and I couldn't just leave her there. So I cast a quick spell on both of her legs, setting them into place and wrapping them up in bandages to help relieve the pain. Her wand was right there, so I knew she'd be able to get help herself soon. But what I was there for was done, and I smiled at Bobble as I slipped the arm into her socket and she finally had her whole body again.

We left after that, smiling all the way into the forest where we decided to make camp, 'cause it had been a long day. But that was when my alarms noticed aurors following us and I tried to Apparate away – but we were stuck. They'd already set up a jinx to stop it. So I told Bobble to run away, which she didn't want to do, but she'd get it worse than I would if I lost against the Aurors. That was when they found me and I tried to duel them, but...it didn't work. And here I am.

* * *

"And here you are." Mckenzie agreed. "Mrs. Puffguts had an alarm sent to her grandchildren when she was in danger, in case you're wondering how you were found so quickly." Mckenzie said. "That about wraps up yo-" She paused as there was a knock at the door. "Ah. If you'll excuse me." She swept up to her feet and went to the door, then exchanged a few hushed whispers with the Auror on the other side. She came back to the table with a small stack of folders, which she laid out in front of her. "Some updates I requested during our break earlier," She assured Harri, who stared down at them.

The information within did nothing to settle Mckenzie's stomach. The first piece of parchment was a copy of a written statement from Mr. Borgin, confirming that he sold a so-called Inferi Skull to someone resembling Harri, who was with Mr. Barrowmont at the time, along with an admittance that he didn't really know whether it was an Inferi Skull or not. It had been found among numerous dark artifacts in a burial mound. There was a picture of said skull, sitting lonesome on a shelf. It almost seemed to be staring at her, though it had no eyes.

There was, of course, the report from Mrs. Puffguts, which confirmed that there had been another individual who accompanied her attacker and broke her legs. This was with the autopsy of Mr. Barrowmont's body, which described all manner of unusual injuries, from his crushed hand, to the cuts that didn't match a severing charm, and the various brutalities that had ultimately killed him.

There were accounts from both Carma and Rabbit confirming that they'd worked with Harri, along with an Inferius that she'd brought along, and that Mr. Barrowmont had instructed them to ensure no harm came to her.

There was a confirmation that somebody matching Harri's description had entered the Ministry's archives and retrieved the newspapers she'd mentioned.

And there were accounts from people who'd known the Candlekeeps, mentioning that they'd had a daughter called Cameron. They had sent letters in to complain about the Daily Prophet about them, but those complaints had fallen on deaf ears. Along with the files on Mr. Barrowont serving as a Ministry leak to the Daily Prophet, Mckenzie had no trouble figuring out exactly why that was.

Then there were statements from various tutors that Mr. Barrowmont had been linked to, confirming that they'd trained a girl in his home. The records of investigation of said home did confirm that there was a room with clothes fit for a girl Harri's age and size, with clothing stored all the way back to the time she was a baby.

All in all, it seemed supremely likely that the girl sitting in front of her was Cameron Candlekeep. But the very last piece of parchment sent a chill through her gut. It was a picture of a skeleton, pristine and white, which had been found not far from Mrs. Puffguts' home. It seemed to have simply fallen where it stood, half-clad in a cloak, with runes carved all over it, from the skull to the arms to the bones. That almost confirmed Harri's story…

Save for the fact that the runes seemed to be freshly carved.

"You said that you're not particularly familiar with magical theory." Mckenzie sat upright in her chair as she met Harri's eyes, her voice stiff.

"I'm not." Harri bit her bottom lip.

"Are you aware of the relevance of number seven? There is a great deal of evidence to support its power – in charms, potions, binding. Whenever there's seven, the magic works that much better."

"Um… Okay." There was a flicker of a smile on Harri's lips.

"Sorry, perhaps I'm feeling a little talkative at the moment." Mckenzie studied Harri's face. "I simply thought it was interesting how seven is so well-known, yet Bobble was split into only six parts. There certainly seems to have been a concentrated effort to split her up, from people who knew magic well. If I were one of them, I might have taken another piece, just to be safe."

"Oh… Maybe they just didn't think of it. They weren't very nice if they wanted to hurt bobble," Harri suggested.

"Perhaps." Mckenzie said. "But perhaps you didn't fix Bobble entirely, as you thought. Perhaps there was a seventh part that she needed." Harri was staring at her. "Perhaps she needed… Flesh."

"Bobble would have told me if she needed more! That's just silly."

Harri's teeth chattered as she laughed.


End file.
